More than 76,000 people were killed in Syria’s civil war in 2014, reports AFP, making it the bloodiest year yet in the war according to a monitor of the situation.

The conflict has lasted for nearly four years already, and already surpassed 200,000 dead.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group, recorded 76,021 deaths in Syria last year.

The group documented the deaths of nearly 18,000 civilians throughout 2014, among them 3,501 children.

Most of the dead were combatants, including nearly 17,000 jihadists, 15,747 rebel forces and 22,627 regime troops and militiamen.

Government figures show at least 15,000 people were killed in the territory controlled by Islamic State (ISIS) in both Syria and neighboring Iraq.

Sources within the Syrian opposition claimed this week that President Bashar Assad’s forces used poison gas in attacks against an eastern Damascus neighborhood under rebel control, wounding seven people.

Last week, Syrian opposition sources claimed that Assad’s forces used chlorine gas in an attack in the suburbs of Damascus, killing two people and wounding over 20.