Including 1082 at the Hands of the Syrian and Russian Regime
SNHR has published its periodic death toll report for the month of August 2016 in which it documented the killing of1521 civilians at the hands of the main influential parties in Syria.
The report notes that SNHR team encounters difficulties in documenting victims from armed opposition factions as many of those victims are killed on battlefronts and not inside cities. Also, we aren’t able to obtain details such as names, pictures and other important details on account of the armed opposition forces’ unwillingness to reveal such information for security concerns among other reasons. Therefore, the actual number of victims is much greater than what is being recorded.
On the other side, the report affirms that it is almost impossible to access information about victims from government 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.
Therefore, the report only incudes civilian victims who were killed by all parties and compare them.
The report breaks down the death toll of August 2016 where government forces killed 898 civilians including 247 children (Eight children are killed every day) and 193 women.
Out of the total number of civilian victim, 49% were children and women which is an explicit indicator on the deliberate targeting of civilians by the government forces.
The report notes that alleged Russian forces killed 184 civilians including 49 children and 29 women.
Additionally, the report documented the killing of 30 civilians including three children and eight women at the hand of the Self-management forces (Primarily consisting of the Democratic Union Party forces – branch for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party)
Furthermore, the report notes that ISIS killed 179 civilians including 37 children and 13 women while Fateh Al Sham Front killed one civilian.
The report also records that 148 civilians, including 50 children and 25 women, were killed by armed opposition factions.
Also, the report records that seven civilians, including one child and one women, were killed the international coalition forces in August.
The report outlines that 97 civilians, including 36 children and 21, have either died drowning as they were fleeing by sea or in bombings that SNHR hasn’t been able to identify its perpetrators or were carried out by unidentified armed groups to SNHR.
The report emphasizes that government forces and Russian forces have violated the international human rights law which guarantees the right to life. Furthermore, evidences and proofs, according to hundreds of eyewitnesses’ accounts, suggest that 90% at least of the widespread and single attacks were directed against civilians and civil facilities.
Also, extremist Islamic groups have committed a number of extrajudicial killings that constitute war crimes.
Moreover, some of the armed opposition factions committed crimes of extrajudicial killing that qualify as war crimes. Also, Self-management forces and international coalition forces have both committed war crimes that manifested in the crime of extrajudicial killing.
The report calls on the Security Council and the international committee to uphold their responsibilities in relation to the crimes of killing that is being perpetrated ceaselessly to the Syrian regime and press on the Syrian government to stop the deliberate and indiscriminate bombardment of civilians.
Finally, the report considers the Russian regime, all Shiite militias, and ISIS as foreign parties that are effectively involved in the killings and holds all of these parties and the financiers and supports of the Syrian regime legally and judicially responsible.