Nearly 30,000 children killed since start of Syria’s revolution: SNHR

At least 29,661 children have been killed in Syria since the beginning of the Syrian revolution and conflict in 2011, with 181 tortured to death and 5,036 still detained and forcibly disappeared, the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) has revealed.

In its tenth annual report on violations against children in Syria, released today on International Children's Day, it was revealed that the vast majority of all killings, torture, and disappearances of children in the country have been committed by the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad over the past decade.

Out of the 29,661 children killed, the report stated that "22,930 [were] at the hands of the Syrian regime forces, 2,032 by Russian forces, 958 by ISIS, and 71 others by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham." That makes Damascus responsible for 78 per cent of extrajudicial killings of children in Syria, with 2013 reportedly being the worst year.

Out of the 181 children tortured to death in the country, 174 of those deaths were in the extensive network of detention centres run by the Syrian regime. That number makes up part of the overall amount of at least 14,400 tortured to death throughout the conflict.

As for those 5,036 children still in detained or disappeared, 3,649 are at the hands of the regime, 667 are at the hands of the Kurdish militia the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), 42 are at the hands of the militia Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), and other armed opposition groups are responsible for the remaining 359.

The report's account of the number of those children killed marks a much higher amount than was previously reported in March this year, when UNICEF asserted that around 12,000 were killed or injured so far throughout the course of the decade-long ongoing civil war.

“This situation and these atrocious conditions can only continue because the reason for this continuing conflict – the existence of the ruling dictatorship, and the international community’s failure to find a political solution since 2012 – has not changed, indicating that new generations of Syrian children are facing a similar dark fate,” Fadel Abdul Ghany, executive director of the SNHR, stressed.

According to the report, out of the 29,661 children killed in the war, 22,930 were killed by Bashar Assad’s regime forces, 2,032 by Russian forces, 958 by Daesh and 71 by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), while the U.S.-backed YPG, the PKK terrorist group’s Syrian wing, has killed 237.

The YPG also forcefully conscripts children, and the practice was also carried out by the regime, the report said. Indicating that Syrian regime forces regularly conscript children, it underlined that this has been ongoing since the earliest days of the conflict. “There have been no investigations or accountability for any instances of child recruitment.”

“The Syrian regime is responsible for nearly 78% of extrajudicial killings,” it said, adding that the year 2013 was the worst for children, followed by 2012, 2014 and 2016.

Furthermore, regime bombings also caused the total or partial destruction of at least 1,197 schools and 29 kindergartens, putting the majority of them out of service. It recorded “the use of schools as military bases by the Syrian regime and its allies.”

For years, the Assad regime has ignored the needs and safety of the Syrian people, only eyeing further gains of territory and crushing the opposition. With this aim, the regime has for years bombed civilian facilities such as schools, hospitals and residential areas, causing the displacement of almost half of the country's population.

The situation is especially worrying in the last opposition bastion, Idlib, one of the main targets of the Assad regime.

The Idlib region is home to nearly 3 million people, two-thirds of them displaced from other parts of the country.

Nearly 75% of the total population in the opposition-held Idlib region depends on humanitarian aid to meet their basic needs, as 1.6 million people continue to live in camps or informal settlements, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said. (Agencies)