Did anyone thing otherwise after 5 years of combat and intensifying aerial bombing, with government attacks supplemented in the past year by heavy Russian air strikes and less Islamic State-targeted bombing by the US and France?
The report is from the Syrian Center for Policy Research, a group based in dictatorial Damascus that turns out credible socio-economic reports on the destruction to Syria of the five-year old war (though always without assigning blame). SCPR says that 470,oo people have died in the war, compared with the last UN figure, issued in 2014, of 250,000.
In any event, with Aleppo now facing Russian bombing and a siege by pro-Assad groups, the disaster visted on other Syrian towns will be multiplied in Syria’s second biggest city. Russia has sent a note to Washington offering a March 1 ceasefire–o0ne wonders, why not an immediate ceasefire. The Obama Administration, always on its heels in this crisis, is suspicious of the offer and dithering.
So look forward to more depressing reports on the death of a nation.
The Guardian on the SCPR report
Older, equally depressing research.
On Aleppo and Russian bombing.
