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| Violence in 2014 killed 15,000 in Iraq, 76,000 in Syria |
| 2015-01-02 |
| More than 76,000 people were killed in Syria’s conflict in 2014, including thousands of children, making it the deadliest year in the nearly four-year war, a monitoring group said in Thursday. Violence in Iraq killed more than 15,000 civilians and security personnel in 2014, government figures showed on Thursday, making it the deadliest year since bloodshed in 2007. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it had documented the deaths of 76,021 people. Of the total, 17,790 were civilians, including 3,501 children. Additionally, more than 15,000 rebel fighters were killed, as were nearly 17,000 militants from radical groups, including the ISIS and Al Nusra Front, Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate. At least 22,627 government forces — both soldiers and members of pro-government militias — were killed, the Britain-based group said. Last year’s figure compared with 73,447 in 2013, another 49,294 in 2012 and 7,841 in 2011. More than 200,000 people have been killed since the conflict began in March 2011. Figures compiled by Iraq’s health, interior and defence ministries put the death toll at 15,538, compared with 17,956 killed in 2007, during the height of killings. The toll was also more than double the 6,522 people killed in 2013. The year got off to a bloody start, with the government losing control of parts of Anbar provincial capital Ramadi and all of Fallujah — just a short drive from Baghdad — to anti-government fighters. The violence was sparked by the demolition of an anti-government protest camp near Ramadi in late 2013. It spread to Fallujah, and security forces later withdrew from areas of both cities, leaving them open for capture. That was a harbinger of events of June, when the ISIS group spearheaded a major offensive, sweeping security forces aside. The militants overran Iraq’s second city Mosul and then drove south toward Baghdad, raising fears the capital itself would be attacked. They were eventually stopped short, but seized swathes of five provinces north and west of the capital. A renewed ISIS push in the north in August drove Kurdish forces back towards the capital of their autonomous region, helping to spark a US-led campaign of air strikes against the militants. That effort has since been expanded to training Iraqi forces aimed at readying them as quickly as possible to join the fight against ISIS. But large parts of the country, including three major cities, remain outside Baghdad’s control. |
| Posted by:Steve White |