Syrian conflict records lowest monthly death toll in 9 years
Of the 103 deaths, some 51 people were killed in shelling and air strikes by the Syrian regime. The bulk of the remaining casualties were caused either by explosive remnants or mysterious assassinations: NGO
The war in Syria killed 103 civilians in March, marking the lowest monthly non-combatant death toll since the start of the conflict in 2011, a war monitor said on Wednesday.
Of the total deaths, some 51 people were killed in shelling and air strikes by the Syrian regime, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The bulk of the remaining casualties were caused either by explosive remnants or mysterious “assassinations,” the Observatory added.
The civilian death toll was more than double that of March in February, when a regime offensive on Syria’s last major rebel bastion was still in full swing.
According to the Observatory, the number of deaths that month stood at 275.
The war in Syria has left more than 380,000 people dead since it started nine years ago.
The highest civilian death toll recorded in a month since the start of the conflict was 1,590 in July 2016, when battles between rebels and the regime raged in the northern province of Aleppo.
Damascus in early March paused a military offensive on rebels and militants in Syria’s northwest, after a ceasefire brokered by regime ally Russia came into effect.
The Moscow-backed campaign had displaced nearly a million people in the region since December, piling pressure on informal settlements already brimming with families forced to flee previous bouts of violence.
The fate of the displaced has been a key concern of aid groups amid an outbreak in the country of the novel coronavirus, which has killed two and infected eight others.
The United Nations has appealed for a nationwide ceasefire to tackle the novel coronavirus threat, while aid groups have warned of a health catastrophe if the pandemic hits overcrowded displacement camps or crammed.
Warring parties in Syria must stop fighting “to avoid further catastrophe,” UN investigators said on Saturday.
“Syrian civilians now face a deadly threat in the form of the COVID-19 outbreak, one that will strike without distinction and that will be devastating for the most vulnerable in the absence of urgent preventative action,” said Paulo Pinheiro, chair of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria.
The parties must heed calls for a ceasefire or face a “looming tragedy,” Pinheiro said, adding: “Anything short of that will likely condemn large numbers of civilians to preventable deaths.”
The commission noted that“much of this situation is a result of pro-government forces systematically targeting medical facilities.”
Just 64 per cent of hospitals and 52 per cent of primary healthcare centres that existed before 2011 are functioning, and 70 per cent of the country’s health workers have left.
“Nurses, doctors and medical volunteers have been attacked, detained and disappeared by parties to the conflict,” the statement said.
“All attacks on medical providers, facilities, hospitals, and first responders must cease immediately.”
The 6.5 million displaced Syrians still living in the country are particularly threatened by the spread of the virus, including one million mainly women and children in the camps of Idlib province along the Turkish border.
The camps offer limited access to water in a region where dozens of hospitals have closed because of the fighting.
Rights groups have also warned of a health disaster in overcrowded prisons.
On a deserted street in the old city of Damascus, the new coronavirus has forced salesmen like Ahmad to close up shop indefinitely for the first time in Syria’s war.
“We’ve lived through some tough times during the war,” says the 59-year-old, sitting on a chair on the pavement outside his textiles shop.
But “never in my life have I seen the markets and shops close for days on end like now.”
All around him, businesses have pulled down their metal blinds or covered up their stands.
The scene is the same across much of the Syrian capital, with squares and markets once thronging with people even during the war now almost entirely empty.
In the century-old covered bazaar of Hamidiya, workers in orange jumpsuits and face masks spray down wooden doors bolted shut with padlocks.