Kurdish Outlet: More Than 150K Killed in Four-Year Syrian Civil War

Kurdish media outlet Rudaw has released a comprehensive report on the death toll of the Syrian Civil War, which has been ongoing for over four years.

Rudaw said it sent a team of researchers onto the front line of the Syrian war to ensure accuracy in its report. 

The Kurdish media entity found that approximately “131,337 civilians and members of the Free Syrian Army fighters have been killed during 1,526 days of conflict, an average of 86 victims per day.”

The study found that for every six to seven opposition fighters killed, one member of Assad’s Syrian Armed Forces lost his life. During the four year period, about 20,277 members of Assad’s forces lost their lives.

In total, Rudaw estimates that 151,614 people have been killed during the war.

The Kurdish media outlet has not yet released any public documentation related to its methodology in providing the casualty count.

Some anti-Assad groups, such as the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), have estimated the total kill count to be more than double the number presented by Rudaw, coming in at 320,000. In its count, the Observatory found that at least 11,493 children have been killed as a result of the war and that the Assad regime was responsible for the vast majority of deaths. The human rights group also found that 1,500,000 people have been injured during the war, and countless more have been displaced from their homes. 

An SOHR statement said Tuesday:

The silence of the International community for the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Syria encourages the criminals to kill more and more Syrian people because they have not found anyone that deter them from continuing their crimes that cause to wound more than 1,500,000 people; some of them with permanent disabilities, make hundreds of thousands children without parents, displace more than half of Syrian people and destroy infrastructure, private and public properties.

Another human rights group, I Am Syria, estimates that over 215,000 Syrians have been killed during the war, which includes 20,000 children.