In five years of civil war, 470, 000 Syrians have been killed and another 70, 000 have perished due to a lack of basics healthcare and medicine, the spread of disease through unsanitary conditions for the displaced people, and lack of access to food or clean water, the Syrian Center for Policy Research reported on Thursday.
The Guardian was first to report details of the report, due to be launched in Beirut on Thursday, that says life expectancy in Syria has dropped to just 55.4 years. Before the conflict Syrians could expect to live to the age of 70.
Will you offer us a hand? Every gift, regardless of size, fuels our future.
Your critical contribution enables us to maintain our independence from shareholders or wealthy owners, allowing us to keep up reporting without bias. It means we can continue to make Jewish Business News available to everyone.
You can support us for as little as $1 via PayPal at office@jewishbusinessnews.com.
Thank you.
Syria’s population was about 21 million when an uprising against the regime of Bashar Assad began in 2011. Antigovernment protests were quelled by a brutal crackdown, sparking a civil war that is now fought by numerous armies, including several radical Islamist groups, and draws funding from myriad foreign powers.
Since the war started, 11.5 percent of Syria’s population has been killed or injured and some 13.8 million Syrians have lost their means of earning a living. Altogether 45 percent of the prewar population has been forced to move — including more than 4 million who have fled the country and 6.36 million displaced within Syria.
The U.N.’s human-rights office has estimated that more than 250, 000 have died, but gave up recording the fatalities from the war in mid-2014 because it couldn’t get hold of reliable data.
