BEIRUT, LEBANON (AFP) – According to a monitor, the fighting in Syria killed 3,746 people in 2021, much less than in 2020, which had previously experienced the war’s lowest death toll in a decade.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, 1,505 of those killed were civilians, with 360 of them being children.
The statistic is by far the lowest since the Syrian conflict began, and it continues a declining trend that saw 6,800 people murdered last year and slightly over 10,000 in 2019.
Landmines and other explosive remnants killed 297 people in Syria in 2021, according to the Observatory, a UK-based NGO with sources in all parts of the country.
According to the Landmine Monitor, Syria has surpassed Afghanistan as the nation with the highest number of reported landmine and explosive remnants of war deaths.
The conflict, which began in 2011 as a result of the government’s ruthless repression of anti-government protesters, has subsided in the last two years.
Although Russian-backed government troops continue to hit targets in the northwestern insurgent stronghold of Idlib on an irregular basis, the truce agreement has mostly maintained.
After their “caliphate” was demolished in 2019, Islamic State fighters went underground and carried out horrific hit-and-run attacks in eastern Syria.
Nearly half a million people have died in Syria’s civil war, which has resulted in the world’s greatest conflict-induced displacement since World War II.