The Syrian-Iranian-Russian Regime is Responsible for the Killing of 76% of Civilian Victims
I. Introduction
This report contains a number of charts for the death toll of 2016, and the death toll of women, children, victims who died due to torture, medical personnel, and lastly, media activists. Additionally, the report presents a number of infographics that compare the death toll at the hands of the influential parties to the Syrian conflict.
The data shown in these charts draws upon the daily documentation processes that have been ongoing since 2011, where SNHR, through its members who are scattered throughout Syria, monitors killings and highlights most notable news and massacre. This is followed by a preliminary toll that is published at the end of every day, and then a preliminary toll at the end of every month. Over the course of six years, our cumulative work has enabled us to establish a database for the victims who are being killed in Syria. For more information, please see our documentation and archiving methodology.
II. The Syrian-Iranian-Russian regime is overwhelmingly the main party responsible for the killing of civilians
Being responsible for 52% of the totality of the crimes that were committed in 2016, the Syrian-Iranian regime surpasses all other parties, including its Russian allies. The Syrian regime possesses an air force composing of fixed-wing warplanes and helicopters that are capable of firing missiles and dropping barrel bombs. Aerial bombardment alone has killed 55% at least of the total number of victims, while shelling using heavy artillery and tanks killed 14%. The remaining death toll is divided between various kinds of weapons ranging from machine guns, to snipers, to mortar shells, to chemical weapons, to cluster munitions, and then slaughtering using white weapons.
Kurdish Self-management forces, primarily consisting of the Democratic Union Party, a branch for The Kurdistan Workers’ Party in Syria, killed no less than 146 Syrian civilians.
All armed opposition factions, including Islamic factions, have killed no less than 1048 civilians.
Other parties, a category that includes bombings we couldn’t identify the groups behind them, and bullets of unknown source, landmines of unknown source, and drowning in addition to Jordanian, Lebanese, and Turkish forces, were responsible for the killing of 951 civilians in 2016.
Comparisons between two sides provide a closer look. For example, when comparing the Syrian regime with ISIS, we find that the Syrian regime has killed six times more civilians than ISIS, while Russian forces, who claimed that they have entered Syria for the purpose of fighting the group, have killed three times more Syrians than ISIS. We believe these figures came to be because both the Syrian and Russian regimes have the resources of a military state including an air force, which these two regimes use on a daily basis to bomb civilian-populated neighborhoods that are controlled by the armed opposition. In many cases, this bombardment is being carried out in a random manner, while it is being conducted deliberately in other cases, for the sole purpose of killing before anything else. In contrast, ISIS uses artillery and mortar shells. It is a very likely possibility that had ISIS possessed a deadlier arsenal, the death toll it would cause would have been considerably bigger.
