Tracking Syria Conflict's Enormous Death Toll

Many international monitoring groups stopped counting the number of deaths in Syria's civil war as the conflict grew in scope and complexity. The United Nations gave its last estimate in 2016, stating that 400,000 people had been killed. A new and possibly bloody chapter in the conflict's history is now set to open on Syria's northern border after President Trump ordered a shock withdrawal of U.S. troops, paving the way for a Turkish incursion.

The move has abandoned America's Kurdish allies and left them at the mercy of the Turkish military. The most recent estimate of deaths in the war was carried out by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights in December 2018. They estimate that 560,000 people were killed in the conflict up to that point, of which 111,330 were civilians, 65,048 were Syrian soldiers, 65,108 were members of radical groups and 63,561 were members of the opposition.