Over 17,000 Inmates Died in Syria in 2011-2015

Over 17,000 people have died in Syrian prisons since the start of the internal conflict in the country in 2011 until December 2015, a new Amnesty International report revealed.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) – According to Syria expert Claudia Scheufler, one of the people who worked on the report, "the scale [of torture at Syrian prisons] has changed dramatically," since the Syrian conflict started.

The Amnesty International report put together stories from over sixty Syrian prison torture survivors.

According to the report, around 17,723 people died in Syrian prisons between March 2011 and December 2015.

The average number of inmate deaths per month was over 300 in that period. In comparison, before the crisis, the average number of people dying in Syrian prisons every month was 3-4.

The Amnesty report points to physical abuse, a lack of medical care and satisfactory sanitary conditions and a lack of food at Syrian prisons.

Syria has been mired in civil war since 2011, with government forces loyal to President Bashar Assad fighting a number of opposition factions and extremist groups. On February 27, a US-Russia brokered ceasefire came into force in Syria. Terrorist groups such as Daesh, as well as Jabhat Fatah al Sham (also known as Jabhat al-Nusra, or al-Nusra Front) are not part of the deal. Both groups are banned in Russia and a range of other countries.