A child or woman in every 13 victims of Syria war: UN

Agencies | Geneva

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

There is a child or a woman in every 13 victims counted in the decade-old war in Syria, which has killed at least 350,209 people, said the United Nations human rights office, adding that the tally was an “undercount.”

“It indicates a minimum verifiable number and is certainly an undercount of the actual number of killings,” the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet told the Human Rights Council.

The toll that includes civilians and combatants follows a strict methodology that verifies the full name, established date and location of death. “On this basis, we have compiled a list of 350,209 identified individuals killed in the conflict in Syria between March 2011 to March 2021,” she said.

A previous update by her office in August 2014 reported that the war killed at least 191,369 people. Bachelet’s office was working on a statistical model to provide a complete picture that could also help establish accountability for some killings. Meanwhile, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says that 500,000 people had lost their lives in the war and that it is examining a further 200,000 cases.

The most documented killings, 51,731, was recorded in the Aleppo governorate, long held by the opposition, which became a flashpoint in the conflict. The war, which spiralled out of an uprising against President Bashar al-Assad’s rule, sparked the world’s biggest refugee crisis.

Syria’s neighbours host 5.6 million refugees, while European countries are hosting more than 1 million. Karen Koning AbuZayd, a member of the UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria investigating war crimes, told the council on Thursday that incidents of unlawful and incommunicado detention by government forces remain “unabated”. “This is no time for anyone to think that Syria is a country fit for its refugees to return. The war on Syrian civilians continues,” she said.