Almost 93,000 people were killed in Syria’s conflict by the end of April this year, but the true number could be “potentially much higher”, the United Nations human rights office says.
The exact figure released on Thursday – 92,901 people – is much higher than the UN’s last death toll back in January of 59,000 people.
“The constant flow of killings continues at shockingly high levels,” said Navi Pillay, the UN high commissioner for human rights. “This is most likely a minimum casualty figure. The true number of those killed is potentially much higher.”
An average of more than 5,000 people have been killed every month since last July, while rural Damascus and Aleppo have recorded the highest tolls since November, the report said in its latest study compiling documented deaths.
Rebel-led mass killing: Meanwhile, Syrian rebels reportedly killed at least 60 people, including civilians government loyalists, in a battle in Halta, a Sunni-majority village in the country’s east, activists said.
The fighting over the past few days targetted members of the Shia community, highlighting the increasingly sectarian nature of the country’s civil war.
The opposition fighters reportedly stormed and burned civilian homes in the village in the eastern Deir Azzor province. The attack is said to be in retaliation for an earlier assault by Shias from Hatla that killed four opposition fighters.
A Syrian government official denounced the attack on the Shia-section of the Sunni-majority Hatla village as a “massacre” of civilians, the Associated Press news agency reported on Thursday.
A video posted online by rebels on Tuesday, entitled “The storming and cleansing of Hatla”, showed dozens of fighters carrying black flags celebrating and firing guns in the streets of a small town as smoke curled above several buildings.
US debates strategy: The alleged massacre came as the US again debated how to help the Syrian opposition.
Addressing reporters with his British counterpart William Hague in Washington, US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Wednesday that a political solution that would end the war and save Syria was still being sought.
The US has weighed for months whether to give arms to the rebels, but the issue is now firmly on the table given increased involvement by Hezbollah, the armed Lebanese Shia group, and as Iran backs President Assad on the battlefield.
“We are focusing our efforts now doing all that we can to support the opposition as they work to change the balance on the ground,” Kerry said at the joint news conference.
Kerry’s comments came as regime forces were reported to be preparing for a major offensive on rebel-held parts of the northern city of Aleppo.
The Obama administration is meeting this week on whether to arm the Syrian rebels, a topic that Kerry said he discussed with Hague. The meetings come ahead of a G8 summit in Northern Ireland next week.
G8 leaders are expected to discuss a coordinated response to the Syrian conflict, and how to bring the rival sides together at a peace conference.
