The Syrian Network for Human Rights issued a report on Wednesday in which it documented the deaths of at least 3,364 civilians in Syria in 2019, while the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights issued a similar report, documenting the deaths of at least 3,473 civilians in the same year.
According to the Network report, 3,364 civilians were killed in Syria in 2019, including 842 children and 486 women. Of these, 1,497 were killed by the Assad regime, and 452 by Russian forces, while 94 were killed by the Islamic State (ISIS) and 49 by extremist groups. There were 21 civilians killed by opposition groups and 164 by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The International Coalition meanwhile killed 68 civilians, according to the report.
It added that the victims included 26 medical staff, 14 of them killed by regime forces, six by Russian forces. There were also 13 media staff killed, six of them by Assad’s forces and two by Russian forces.
The report also said that 305 people were killed under torture in 2019, including 275 killed by the regime, four by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham and armed opposition groups, and 13 by the SDF, with nine killed by other groups.
The Network documented the occurrence of at least 109 massacres during the year, 43 committed by regime forces and 22 by Russian forces. Six were committed by the SDF, and three by International Coalition forces, and 35 by other groups.
2019 was the ”least bloody”
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights documented the deaths of 3,473 civilians in Syria in 2019, including 1,021 children, describing it as the “least bloody year since the start of the war, which has over about nine years resulted in the deaths of 370,000 people.”
The Observatory said on its official page that 2019 had registered the lowest annual death toll since 2011, with 11,215 people killed, including fighters and civilians, in 2019. It said that the civilian death toll was 3,473.
The Observatory said that 2019 had seen “fierce fighting” on three fronts—first, in March, when the Kurdish People’s Protection Units expelled ISIS from its last holdout in easternmost Syria near the border with Iraq.
The second was in summer 2019, when Assad regime forces escalated their military campaign on Idleb, in northwestern Syria, and the third in 2019, when the regime further escalated its campaign on Idleb—a reference to the summer fighting that killed around a thousand civilians.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights called on the United Nations to condemn the crimes and massacres, the two primary culprits in the destruction of the “de-escalation” agreements and for a return of the peace process to its usual form after Russia’s attempts to distort it and to put forward the Constitutional Committee in place of the transitional governing body.
This article was translated and edited by The Syrian Observer. The Syrian Observer has not verified the content of this story. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author.
