The Labour party has implied that the civilian death toll from coalition bombings is comparable with that from Russian ones

A Labour party spokesman has suggested there is too much focus on Russian atrocities in Syria, which “sometimes diverts attention from other atrocities that are taking place”, and highlighted killings by the US-led coalition.

The remarks implied the casualties were comparable, and that coalition attacks had been ignored by politicians, rights groups and the media in the west. What are the facts about civilian deaths in Syria?

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No party to Syria’s brutal civil war has joined the conflict without killing civilians, but the scale of deaths caused by Russia’s bombing campaign is much higher than that from coalition airstrikes.



Russian attacks also appear to have deliberately targeted civilians and the infrastructure of civilian life – markets, hospitals and homes – while the coalition has been trying to avoid or limit civilian casualties, although it could do far more, human rights groups said.

“The coalition kills too many civilians but it is clear they are trying to limit those deaths, while everything we understand about the way Russia is behaving shows they are deliberately targeting civilians, civilian infrastructure,” said Chris Woods, the director of Monitoring group Airwars.

“We’d certainly agree that the solution is definitely not more bombs but … Russia and the coalition are fighting different wars when it comes to civilians.”

Airwars has recorded 3,600 civilian deaths caused by Russian bombing raids since they joined the Syrian conflict just over a year ago, a number Woods described as an “absolute minimum”.

In contrast, the coalition has caused nearly 900 civilian deaths over 26 months of bombing, 19 acknowledged by the coalition itself and another 858 recorded by monitoring groups.

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“That means the Russians’ death rate probably outpaces the coalition by a rate of eight to one,” Woods said.



He added that the toll from Russian airstrikes may rise because the group’s analysts, who comb through each reported case of a civilian death to verify the attacks, were struggling to keep up with the pace of attacks.

“We are running a huge backlog of cases because the Russians are alleged to have killed so many civilians.”



Russia has not acknowledged causing any civilian deaths, and says it is only targeting “terrorists”.

The civilian deaths at the hands of the coalition have not gone unreported in the media or by rights groups, as evidenced by outrage at the mass casualties this summer.



Amnesty International, which will release a report on the civilian toll of US strikes this month, has tallied at least 300 deaths “and the real figure is likely at least twice that”, said a Syria researcher for the group, Neil Sammonds.

However, he said, the rate of killing was not comparable with attacks by Russian planes, or killings by the government they were supporting, which dwarf the death toll from any of the outside parties to the conflict.

Forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad were responsible for the majority of killings in the country, monitoring groups agreed.



The Violations Documentation Centre said just more than 147,000 civilians had been killed between the start of the war in 2011 and 11 October.

It only attributes deaths with clear evidence so not all are accounted for, but its records hold the Syrian government and affiliated militia responsible for 92,000 civilian deaths, Russian forces for 3,412, Syrian opposition fighters, excluding Isis, for 2,470, and Isis for 3,078. It attributes 768 to the international coalition.

“Syrians, especially progressive ones, find it bewildering that so many supposedly similar-minded people worldwide don’t ally with the moderate opposition, and seem to gloss over the sickening abuses of the Assad regime and Russia,” Sammonds said. “Criticisms of the regime and Russia are followed in the same breath with condemnations of the US, whose abuses are far, far fewer.”

The Syrian Network for Human Rights had a higher toll than the VDC, but similar ratios. It said that by the end of December 2015, government forces had killed more than 187,000 civilians, armed opposition groups nearly 3,500, Russian forces 2,585, Isis 2,503 and coalition airstrikes 627.