Middle-east Arab News Opinion | Asharq Al-awsat

167,000 People Killed in Six World Conflicts in 2015 | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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The International Institute for Strategic Studies’ annual report revealed on Thursday that last year was a bloody one despite a drop in the number of armed conflicts. About 167,000 people died and a third of this number died in Syria alone.

In the report published in London by the prominent institute, 80% of these victims were killed in six large armed conflicts in Syria, Latin America, Mexico, Afghanistan, Nigeria and Iraq.

The report also explained that “the armed conflict taking place in Syria since 2011 left 55,000 people dead in the last year” and pointed out that “this number is lower than the number of people killed in 2014, but it is still 66% of the total number of victims in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, and a third worldwide.”

The report showed that the governments of Iraq, Syria and Somalia succeeded in retrieving areas that were out of their control, and this often occurred with foreign assistance according to what the Director-General of the institute Dr. John Chipman said.

A smaller number of people lost their lives in sub-Saharan African countries despite the war on the organization Boko Haram in Nigeria.

Regarding the situation in Turkey, the report noted that the government responded to the increase in terrorist threats in the past year by providing more military forces to drive the terrorists away and bombing PKK camps in neighboring countries. The government is trying to extend its control over the southeastern cities and wrest them from the hands of the rebels.

The report pointed out that the number of victims has risen rapidly due to the conflict in Afghanistan where 15,000 people were killed in 2015, compared to 3,500,000 thousand people in 2013 when ISAF international forces provided security assistance to the country.

The report also refers to the rise in the number of refugees and people displaced by the conflict to 46 million in 2015, compared to 43 million in 2014 and 33 million in 2013.