Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Syrian civil war began in March 2011, when protests against Bashar al-Assad's Ba'athist government escalated into armed conflict. It lasted almost fourteen years, culminating in the fall of the Assad regime on the 8th of December 2024, when Assad fled to Moscow and his government collapsed.
Estimates of total deaths in the Syrian civil war reached approximately 656,493 as of March 2025. The most violent year was 2014, when around 110,000 people were killed. The Syrian Network for Human Rights estimated that the Ba'athist government and its allies were responsible for approximately 91 percent of civilian casualties.
Iran launched a military intervention in support of Assad in 2013, and Russia began airstrikes and ground operations in September 2015. Hezbollah deployed an estimated 5,000 to 8,000 fighters inside Syria. The United States led a coalition supporting Kurdish-led forces and rebel groups, spending $1 billion a year training and arming nearly 10,000 rebel fighters under the Timber Sycamore program. Turkey occupied parts of northern Syria while fighting the Syrian Democratic Forces, Assad's forces, and the Islamic State.
Sarin, mustard agent, and chlorine gas were all used during the conflict. Researchers documented 336 confirmed chemical weapons attacks between December 2012 and January 2019, attributing 98 percent to the Assad regime. Syria was suspended from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in April 2021 for failing to cooperate with investigators.
As of December 2022, an estimated 6.7 million refugees had fled Syria. Approximately 5.5 million resided across Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, and Egypt. Over 3.7 million Syrians were in Turkey alone, and Germany, the largest non-neighboring host country, accepted more than 850,000 Syrian refugees since 2011.
On the 27th of November 2024, a coalition led by Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham launched a major offensive. Aleppo fell in three days, then Hama and Homs. On the 8th of December, Assad fled to Moscow, where Russia granted him asylum. His prime minister transferred power to a provisional government, ending over sixty years of Ba'athist rule.