While the vast majority of Australians enjoyed the holiday season and the gifts it provided, the warzones of the Middle East suffered a particularly severe Christmas week.
In addition to the damage wreaked by over 30 airstrikes across Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) released data during the week from a three-month analysis of Islamic State (IS)-related fighting.
On Tuesday, 30 IS militants were killed by Syrian Kurdish soldiers in the village of Abo Qassayed, which they also managed to regain control of. The battle was the week's first significant conflict.
Then, on Christmas Day, coalition airstrikes resulted in a breakthrough for anti-IS strategists, as the Iraqi police reported that the recently self-appointed mayor of the stronghold city of Mosul, Hassan Saeed Al-Jabouri (also known as Abu Taluut) was killed in the nearby village of Qayyara.
With a million residents, Mosul was over-run by IS militants in early 2014, and the location's significance was apparent in the Pentagon's immediate response in January. American military strategists sought to recapture the city as quickly as possible.
Six airstrikes by Syrian forces occurred on Thursday, with over 100 people either injured or killed in the city of al-Bab, which had also come under IS rule, and the town of Qbasin. Statistics were provided by the SOHR.
The U.S. and coalition forces conducted 31 airstrikes against IS on Friday: 15 in Iraq and 16 in Syria. According to intelligence from the Pentagon, IS lost weaponry, eight tactical units, two major units, two fighter positions, a number of vehicles, and storage containers.
In Syria, IS also incurred significant damage, including the loss of several buildings, six units, 19 fighting positions, and a few vehicles.
The week's activity contributed to the data delivered in SOHR's Tuesday announcement. According to the UK-based human rights group, considered reputable on the international stage, almost 1,200 lives have been taken by IS, including 52 civilians, while close to 800 people have been injured. Meanwhile, 1,046 IS fighters, who were mostly non-Syrian, have been killed over a three-month period in Syria.
In a statement released on Tuesday, the SOHR was highly critical of the civilian deaths that have been documented:
"We, in SOHR, believed that the real number of casualties in ISIS is more than our number, because there is absolute secrecy on casualties and due to the difficulty of access to many areas and villages that have witnessed violent clashes and bombardment".
The U.S. Defense Department also released figures, totaling the monetary cost of both the Iraq and Syrian campaigns, active since early August, at US$1.02 billion. Up until December 11, the daily cost of the anti-IS war comes to $8.1 million.