The war in Syria has claimed more than 528,500 lives, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported on Wednesday, marking nearly 14 years of a devastating conflict triggered by the regime of Bashar al-Assad’s violent crackdown on a pro-democracy uprising. Assad was overthrown on December 8 2024.
More than 181,939 civilians are among the 528,592 people killed since the war began in 2011, including at least 15,207 women and 25,284 children, along with combatants, according to the Observatory.
This toll includes deaths recorded in 2024, as well as thousands of others from previous years that the NGO was only able to verify recently.
In total, for the year 2024, which saw the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in December, the SOHR reported 6,777 deaths. Among them were 3,598 civilians, including 240 women and 337 "children under 18," according to the NGO's report. The Observatory, based in the United Kingdom, relies on a wide network of sources in Syria.
Additionally, 3,179 fighters from various warring factions were killed, including forces of the "former regime," "Islamist armed groups," and jihadists, the same source said.
In 2023, the SOHR reported 4,360 deaths, nearly 1,900 of which were civilians.
The conflict, which began on March 15, 2011, as a popular uprising violently suppressed, grew increasingly complex with the involvement of international actors and the influx of jihadists from around the world, tearing the country apart.
The entry into Damascus on December 8 by a rebel coalition led by the radical Sunni Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) marked the end of the "regime." For over half a century, the Assad family had ruled Syria with an iron grip, crushing dissent and suppressing public freedoms.
Since 2011, the SOHR has been able to verify the deaths of more than 64,000 people in the former regime’s prisons "due to torture, medical neglect, or poor detention conditions."
With AFP
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