Childhood casualties during civil war: Syrian experience

In war areas a lot of children die as well as adults. According to UNICEF, almost 2 million children have died in the wars took place in the last 10 years. In this study, we aimed to evaluate demographical data and injury characteristics of Syrian children who were wounded in Syria Civil War and died while being treated in Turkey. Postmortem examination and autopsy reports of 985 forensic deaths from Hatay -a Syrian neighborhood city of Turkey-between January 2012 and August 2014 were analyzed retrospectively. Among 763 Syrian people who were wounded in the war and died while being treated in Turkey, 140 cases (18.3%) who were younger than 18 years of age were taken into the scope of this study. Among those cases 77.9% (n = 109) were male and 22.1% were female. Median ages of female cases are 14 (min-max: 2-18) and median age of female cases are 9 (min-max: 1-18). Frequency distribution is highest between 13 and 18 years of age (n: 71, 50.7%). In 70% (n: 98) of cases, cause of death is bombing and shrapnel injuries, 13.6% (19) of them were killed by gunshot wounds. According to injury sites most of the injuries were reported to be on multiple body parts (54.3%, n: 76) and only head and neck injuries (%30). Cause of death was intracranial bleeding and cerebral parenchymal injury in most of the cases (n: 66, %47.1) followed by vascular damage with external bleeding (n: 15, %10.7) and internal organ damage with internal bleeding (n: 15, %10.7). The cases had very high level Abbreviated Injury Scales and Injury Severity Sores. In conclusion, a lot of children have died in the Civil War of Syria. Their average abbreviated injury scale and injury severity score values reported very high. Children that we evaluated were mostly died of head and neck injuries predominantly caused by bombing attacks and Autopsies of them revealed fatal intracranial hemorrhages and parenchymal injuries.