Since December last year, more than 15,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza; more than half of that since Israel collapsed the ceasefire in March.

About half as many have been killed in Syria since the HTS came to power on December 8th last year. At least 7,670, mainly civilians, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR). This includes more than 2,130 “extrajudicial executions” and “identity-based killings.”

Given the sheer continuous ferocity of the IDF assualt on Gaza, the total for Syria is alarming.

SOHR – which relies on a network of sources across Syria – documented “the killing of 7,670 people across Syria from December 8, 2024, to June 6, 2025,” adding that this number comprises “5,784 civilians, including 306 children and 422 women.”

The UK-based war monitor warned that “this grim toll is a result of ongoing violence and violations by local and external parties, alongside widespread security chaos,” and reflects “the fragility of the security situation and the increasing danger to the most vulnerable constituents of society.”

SOHR further pointed to what it said was an “escalation of extrajudicial executions and identity-based killings,” noting that it had documented 2,133 of such killings that were “committed in brutal ways.”

According to SOHR documentation, civilians constituted 75.4 percent of the total fatalities during these six months, while non-civilians accounted for 24.6 percent.

Sections of the Left in the UK welcomed the overthrow of the Assad government in December as a “liberation”. The reports above, and the HTS regime’s current discussions with Israel on possible partition of Lebanon, which appear to be animated by the United States, with with the prospect of Syria occupying the North of the country as far as the Med at Tripoli and occupying the Bekaa valley to act as pressure from the North to help secure Israel’s Northern border; should put that sharply into question in their own minds.

Israel is now indicating, with bombs, that it is far from reliant on such a deal and may simply want to hold hard to the Syrian territory it has occupied since the fall of Assad.