Syrian Conflict In First Half Of Year

The Syrian Network For Human Rights (SNHR) reports the death tolls for the first half of 2017. A total of 5381 civilians have been killed from January 2017 to June 2017, including 1159 children and 742 women and 93 from torture.

In this time frame, International Coalition forces killed 1008 civilians, including 291 children and 183 women. Russian forces killed 641 civilians, including 209 children and 122 women.

The SNHR report also shows that Kurdish Self-Management forces killed 153 civilians, including 31 children and 25 women in addition to five who died due to torture. Extremist Islamic groups killed 866 civilians, including 181 children and 94 women, where 857 of those, including 180 children and 94 women, were killed by ISIS, whereas nine civilians, including one child, were killed by Fateh al Sham Front.

​Armed opposition factions killed 119 civilians in the first half of 2017 including 35 children and 15 women in addition to three who died due to torture. Lastly, the report records that 522 civilians, including 94 children and 58 women in addition to three who died due to torture, were killed at the hands of other parties.

The report talks about the de-escalation zones agreement that went into effect on May 6, 2017, after it was announced at the end of the fourth round of negotiations that was held between Russian, Turkish, and Iranian representatives, who attended as the sponsoring states of Ankara Ceasefire Agreement.
 
The report shows that where this agreement went into effect, there was a noticeable and good decrease in killing rates compared with the previous months since March 2011, where we recorded last month a 69% decline in the rates of killings at the hands of the Syrian-Russian alliance throughout Syria.
   
This report stresses that it is almost impossible to access information about victims from Syrian regime forces or from ISIS and the margin of error is considerably higher due to the lack of any applicable methodology in this type of documentation. The Syrian government and ISIS don’t publish, reveal, or record their victims. From our perspective, the statistics published by some groups on this category of victims are fictitious and are not based on any actual data.
 
The report calls on the Security Council and the relevant international entities to uphold their responsibilities in relation to the crimes of killing that is being perpetrated ceaselessly and to apply pressure on the Syrian government to stop the deliberate and indiscriminate shelling against civilians.

​Syrian Observatory For Human Rights

2017-07-02