UN says at least 350K killed in Syria’s war, 'certainly an undercount'

The United Nations has counted more than 350,000 deaths from Syria’s ruinous civil war, a figure the UN human rights chief acknowledged on Friday is a major undercount. 

The body hasn’t released an official death toll from the conflict since August 2014’s count of 191,369 civilian and combatant deaths. Shortly after, the UN suspended its monitoring work as the situation on the ground grew more dangerous. 

In March 2021, Syria marked 10 years since the peaceful protests erupted against President Bashar al-Assad and sparked a decade-long civil war between the Russian-backed government and opposition forces seeking to oust it. As Syria passed the grim milestone in March, the UN Human Rights Council requested that the UN resume its work counting civilian casualties. 

In what UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet described as a “minimum verifiable number,” her office said Friday that it has now compiled a list of 350,209 identified individuals killed in the conflict from March 2011 to March 2021. One in every 13 deaths is a woman and nearly one in every 13 is a child, her office said.