2014 Deadliest Year Since Fighting Began in Syria, Including 3,500 Children Killed

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 2014 was the deadliest year yet since fighting began in the country in 2011.

By year’s end, the group documented 76,021 deaths, a conservative count they believe to be about 30,000 below the real number of casualties.

The largest group of casualties was civilians, with 17,790 deaths including 3,501 children and 1,987 women.

Among rebels groups ranging from the secular Free Syrian Army to Islamic factions, 15,488 were killed. Of Syrian regime soldiers and officers who defected to fight Bashar Assad, 259 died.

Assad’s regime lost 12,681 soldiers and officers. The pro-regime Popular Defense Committees, National Defense Forces, and al Shabiha lost 9,766 fighters, while 2,167 Arabs and Asians were killed fighting with pro-regime Shiite militias.

ISIS, the al-Nusra Front, Junoud al-Sham battalion, Jund Al-Aqsa battalion, Jund al-Sham Movement and al-Khadra’ battalion lost 16,979 Arab, European, Asian, American and Australian fighters.

The group also documented the deaths of 366 Hezbollah militiamen inside the country.

The group received 345 documented reports of deaths, confirmed by photos or video) for which it could not identify the victims or any affiliation.

Thousands of detainees remain inside Assad’s prisons and thousands more are still missing after regime raids and attacks. Rebel groups are estimated to be holding hundreds of regime soldiers and pro-regime militants.

The Islamic State is pulling thousands of people into their jails, as well.

“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,” the human-rights group said.

“After the failure of referring cases of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Syria to the International criminal court because of the Russian-Chinese veto in the Security Council, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights renews its call to all international sides to establish a special court for Syria. We in the Syrian Observatory demand the punishment of all perpetrators, instigators, collaborators and all individuals and sides who used the Syrian blood as a political card and as means to carry out their personal agendas, as well as those who transformed a revolution for dignity to a sectarian and ethnic civil war.”