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Death Tolls of World Conflicts Rose Dramatically Last Year

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A man carries a wounded person in the rebel-held area of Douma, east of the Syrian capital Damascus, following reported air strikes by regime forces on March 15, 2015.
A man carries a wounded person in the rebel-held area of Douma, east of the Syrian capital Damascus, following reported air strikes by regime forces on March 15, 2015.Abd Doumany—AFP/Getty Images
By Nolan Feeney

The death tolls of the world’s gravest conflicts rose 28 percent between 2013 and 2014, partly due to increased violence from Islamic extremist groups, according to a new report.

In 2014, more than 76,000 people were killed in Syria, 21,000 were killed in Iraq, 14,638 were killed in Afghanistan and 11,529 were killed in Nigeria, according to a Wednesday study from the Project for the Study of the 21st Century, Reuters reports. But the data, whose sources include the United Nations, the U.S. military and the Syria Observatory for Human Rights, paint an incomplete picture.

“Assessing casualty figures in conflict is notoriously difficult and many of the figures we are looking at here are probably underestimates,” Peter Apps, the executive director of PS21, told Reuters. “The important thing, however, is that when you compare like with like data for 2014 and 2013, you get a very significant increase.”

The conflict in Syria was the bloodiest, causing the most deaths for the second year in a row. Outside of the Middle East, the conflict in Ukraine pushed the country up to the list’s eighth place.

[Reuters]

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Write to Nolan Feeney at nolan.feeney@time.com