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Over the four years that researcher Xi Li has watched Syria’s civil war unfold through nighttime satellite imagery, he has seen the pinpricks of light that dotted the north and east fade and the Mediterranean coast darken until 83 per cent of the country’s lights have gone out.

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From a vantage point that few everyday people have seen, Li has produced a chilling measurement of a crisis that shows no sign of ending.

As the civil war moves into its fifth year, a global coalition of dozens of human rights and humanitarian groups released Li’s analysis late Wednesday and demanded a comprehensive effort to get aid to millions of Syrians.

“Satellite data never tell lies,” the Chinese-born Li, a visiting scholar at the University of Maryland’s Department of Geographic Sciences, said in a phone call Wednesday. “The night images are very unbelievable. The Syrian people need help.”

He has measured the levels of nighttime light across Syria since the conflict began in March 2011. His findings were published last year in the International Journal of Remote Sensing and came to the attention of the #withSyria coalition after a friend who does similar work at Columbia University put them in touch.

Because single images can be affected by cloud cover or other factors, Li came up with a monthly average image of nighttime light so it could be compared over the course of Syria’s conflict.