As Civil War Enters 10th Year, Syrian Death Toll Pegged at Nearly 400,000

According to a war monitoring group, at least 384,000 people – including over 115,000 civilians – have been killed in Syria since the conflict there erupted in March 2011. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that among the dead were about 22,000 children and 13,000 women. More than 11 million others – over half of the pre-war population – have been displaced from their homes. Regarding combatants, the Observatory estimated that nearly 130,000 troops loyal to President Bashar al-Assad have been killed, including just under 1,700 members of the Lebanon-based Iranian proxy Hizbullah. Furthermore, some 57,000 “rebels” (the vast majority being Sunni Arabs of mainly Syrian origin who revolted against the Alawite regime in Damascus) have died in battle, in addition to about 67,000 members of Islamic State and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. Prior to a recent – and still-fragile – cease-fire, the latter group was the target of a controversial Syrian-led and Russian-backed offensive in northwest Idlib Province that displaced close one million people and drew Turkey deeper into the military fold. Finally, the Observatory pegged at over 13,500 the number of those killed within the ranks of the US-allied Syrian Democratic Forces, composed primarily of Kurds who played an outsized role on the ground against ISIS. The overall death toll does not include tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of Syrians who have either been imprisoned or subjected to “forced disappearance.”