A monitoring group says that about 39,000 people, including 10,507 civilians, were killed in the Syrian war in 2017.

The fatalities included 2,109 children and 1,492 women, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on December 28.

The opposition-linked group, which monitors casualties on all sides of the conflict, said the tally also included 2,923 Syrian government soldiers as well as 7,494 militant fighters, mainly members of the Islamic State (IS) extremist group and an Al-Qaeda-linked outfit.

This year’s fatalities marked a decline from 2016, when the observatory said it had documented 49,742 deaths in Syria's violence.

Syria's civil war has killed some 400,000 people since it began with antigovernment demonstrations in March 2011.

The conflict has also displaced about half of Syria's prewar population of 22 million and created the worst refugee crisis since World War II, with some 5 million Syrians having fled the country.

Russia and Iran support the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the war, while the United States and Turkey back differing rebel groups.