Paris – Statement by the Syrian Network for Human Rights:
 
The operation carried out by the US-led coalition forces on Thursday, February 3, 2022, which targeted a residential house consisting of two floors and a basement in the north of Atama village in the northern suburbs of Idlib, demonstrated that leaders and members of ISIS extremist organization might be deployed in many areas, including areas that have never been controlled by the organization, such as Atama village and others. We have documented dozens of occasions on which the organization took civilians as human shields and took cover among them in the areas it controlled. Raqqa city may be one of the most prominent examples of this, with SNHR highlighting the subject previously, revealing that ISIS confiscated many civilians’ homes under the pretext of the supposed “blasphemy” of their owners and the “confiscation” of their money, turning these homes into residences for its security and military leaders and living among civilians, most of whom the group referred to as infidels, while at the same time using them as human shields. ISIS has also used its own members’ families as human shields, including women and children.
 
We at the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) have documented the deaths of at least 3,048 civilians at the hands of the US-led coalition forces, including 925 children, since September 2014 up to the current date (in the last attack on the house where ISIS leader Abdullah Qardash was staying, we documented civilian casualties, including women and children; investigations are still underway to determine how this happened); many of these civilians were killed due to the US-led coalition forces’ failure to observe the principle of proportionality in international law, which is based on the attacking party’s carefully assessing the context before determining the legality or illegality of the attack. Any attack that will cause losses and damages exceeding the potential military advantage is prohibited, so a balance must always be maintained between the means, the goal, and the action results.
 
ISIS bears the responsibility of residing in civilian neighborhoods, which poses a threat to all these neighborhoods and bearing responsibility for endangering the families of its members. It should also be noted, however, that the Syrian regime, Russia, and Syrian Democratic Forces are all exploiting this situation to stigmatize entire areas as incubators for extremist organizations, in an attempt to give the appearance of being primarily concerned with combating terrorism and using this as justification for the indiscriminate or deliberately targeted bombing of residential areas, bearing in mind that the areas whose populations have been worst affected by extremist organizations have been those areas under the group’s control, whose residents have been subject to laws dating back to the most barbaric periods of the dark ages. Recently, we issued two reports on violations by Hay’at Tahrir al Sham and ISIS against Syrian society, which highlight this issue.
 

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I. Introduction
This report contains a number of charts for the death toll of 2016, and the death toll of women, children, victims who died due to torture, medical personnel, and lastly, media activists. Additionally, the report presents a number of infographics that compare the death toll at the hands of the influential parties to the Syrian conflict.
 
The data shown in these charts draws upon the daily documentation processes that have been ongoing since 2011, where SNHR, through its members who are scattered throughout Syria, monitors killings and highlights most notable news and massacre. This is followed by a preliminary toll that is published at the end of every day, and then a preliminary toll at the end of every month. Over the course of six years, our cumulative work has enabled us to establish a database for the victims who are being killed in Syria. For more information, please see our documentation and archiving methodology.
 
II. The Syrian-Iranian-Russian regime is overwhelmingly the main party responsible for the killing of civilians
Being responsible for 52% of the totality of the crimes that were committed in 2016, the Syrian-Iranian regime surpasses all other parties, including its Russian allies. The Syrian regime possesses an air force composing of fixed-wing warplanes and helicopters that are capable of firing missiles and dropping barrel bombs. Aerial bombardment alone has killed 55% at least of the total number of victims, while shelling using heavy artillery and tanks killed 14%. The remaining death toll is divided between various kinds of weapons ranging from machine guns, to snipers, to mortar shells, to chemical weapons, to cluster munitions, and then slaughtering using white weapons.
 
Kurdish Self-management forces, primarily consisting of the Democratic Union Party, a branch for The Kurdistan Workers’ Party in Syria, killed no less than 146 Syrian civilians.
All armed opposition factions, including Islamic factions, have killed no less than 1048 civilians.
Other parties, a category that includes bombings we couldn’t identify the groups behind them, and bullets of unknown source, landmines of unknown source, and drowning in addition to Jordanian, Lebanese, and Turkish forces, were responsible for the killing of 951 civilians in 2016.
 
Comparisons between two sides provide a closer look. For example, when comparing the Syrian regime with ISIS, we find that the Syrian regime has killed six times more civilians than ISIS, while Russian forces, who claimed that they have entered Syria for the purpose of fighting the group, have killed three times more Syrians than ISIS. We believe these figures came to be because both the Syrian and Russian regimes have the resources of a military state including an air force, which these two regimes use on a daily basis to bomb civilian-populated neighborhoods that are controlled by the armed opposition. In many cases, this bombardment is being carried out in a random manner, while it is being conducted deliberately in other cases, for the sole purpose of killing before anything else. In contrast, ISIS uses artillery and mortar shells. It is a very likely possibility that had ISIS possessed a deadlier arsenal, the death toll it would cause would have been considerably bigger.

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A- Introduction:
When the popular demonstrations started in March 2011, it was for certain demands concerning the Syrian people, demanding freedom, multi-party system, exchange of power, equitable distribution of wealth, and equality between the sects in the aspect of living in dignity, they kept the demonstration claiming their demands even after the protests started being labeled as an internal armed conflict in April 2012, the Syrian have welcomed UN observers according to Mr. Kofi Annan plan, and that happened in the midst of huge crowds in April, May, and June of 2012, as the armed conflict gradually aggravated the demonstration decreased, until it lost its intended effect, as it almost completely stopped on the early 2013.

Since Mach 2011 and until Al-Nusra Front declared their allegiance to Al-Qaeda in January 2012; it had no role in the Syrian scene, but with the expanding of the government forces use of force and committing crimes against humanity and with the almost dead silence of the international community, especially towards the sectarian slaughters, gave legitimacy and compassion of the people with the extremist groups, that came from out of the border, claiming to want to save the people from the infidel ruling regime, and it started expanding and establishing a mass support base.
On April 9, 2013, Islamic State in Iraq and Sham (Levant) known later as ISIS/ISIL by the Syrian community, they declared their existence and made Al-Nusra Front part of the organization, but that was refused by Al-Nusra front who declared allegiance to Al-Qaeda, ISIS started expanding as well, but early after its founding it started violating and harassing local residents, what evolved to wide spread conflicts in the early 2014 that is still ongoing.

Most notable reasons for the people support of extremist groups:
1- The huge amount of crimes committed by government forces
2- International community passiveness and disability to protect the civilians in all Syrian provinces
3- The Security Council resolutions and the alliances concentration on the extremist groups overlooking the Shiite extremist groups that depend on injustice in its speech
4- Some extremist journalist supporting them from some specifically Arab channels, and giving them a wide media cover, and claiming all victories even the ones they barely participate in, what gave it a wide base of people support, and made many Syrians join them, and those journalist must be held responsible according to Security Council resolutions 2170 issued in August 15, 2014 and 2199 issued in February 12, 2015.

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Syrian regime forces, pro-government forces and foreign militias have widely adopted the practice of execution by burning and the burning of bodies of murdered persons since the start of the events in Syria in 2011. This practice has endured throughout 2012 and the following years.
 
Burning individuals to death at the hands of the Syrian regime has received little or no media coverage. Syrian government officials deny carrying out such practices; however such crimes are being embraced and published on several pro-government websites. These crimes have not been recorded by regime forces, but rather by the victims’ families and/or local human rights activists using modest recording tools and cameras. The content of these recordings have then been uploaded to several websites, and sent to the Syrian Network for Human Rights via email. Based on witness accounts, testimonies of family members and video evidence, the Syrian Network for Human Rights, in collaboration with the Euro-Mid Observer for Human Rights, has been able to monitor and document these crimes and produce accurate results.
 

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Comparison of the civilians whom were killed by the Syrian regime and ISIS
Civilians killed by Syrian Regime 124752
Civilians killed by ISIS 831
Children killed by Syrian Regime 17139
Children killed by ISIS 137

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