REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, BEIRUT - Nearly 93,000 people have been confirmed killed in Syria since an uprising against President Bashar Assad began more than two years ago, the UN said Thursday, a sharp rise in the death toll as the fighting turns increasingly sectarian and the carnage gripping the country appears unstoppable.
The grim benchmark came as Assad's regime has scored a series of battlefield successes against the opposition group seeking his ouster and international efforts to forge a round of peace talks have stalled.
In Geneva, the UN human rights office said it had documented 92,901 killings in Syria between March 2011 and the end of April 2013. But the UN high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay, said it was impossible to provide an exact number, which could be far higher.
The figure was up from nearly 60,000 through the end of November, recorded in an analysis released in January. Since then, UN officials had estimated higher numbers, most recently 80,000. The latest report adds more confirmed killings to the previous time period and an additional 27,000 between December and April.
The conflict in Syria began in March 2011 as largely peaceful protests against Assad's autocratic regime. After a relentless government crackdown on the protests, many Syrians took up arms against the regime, and the uprising descended into civil war.
The figures trace the arc of violence, with the average monthly number of documented killings rising from around 1,000 per month in the summer of 2011 to an average of more than 5,000 per month since last July. At its height from July to October 2012, the number of killings rose above 6,000 per month.
"The constant flow of killings continues at shockingly high levels," Pillay said. "This is most likely a minimum casualty figure. The true number of those killed is potentially much higher."
Among the victims were at least 6,561 children, including 1,729 children younger than 10.
"There are also well-documented cases of individual children being tortured and executed, and entire families including babies being massacred — which, along with this devastatingly high death toll, is a terrible reminder of just how vicious this conflict has become," Pillay said.
Her office commissioned San Francisco-based nonprofit Human Rights Data Analysis Group to study eight data sets provided by various groups containing 263,000 reported killings. Those lacking a name, date and location of death were excluded, and some duplicates were found.
"Civilians are bearing the brunt of widespread, violent and often indiscriminate attacks which are devastating whole swaths of major towns and cities, as well as outlying villages," Pillay said.
"Government forces are shelling and launching aerial attacks on urban areas day in and day out," she said. "Opposition forces have also shelled residential areas, albeit using less firepower, and there have been multiple bombings resulting in casualties in the heart of cities, especially Damascus."
The vast majority of the victims are male. Three-quarters of the reported killings do not indicate the victim's age, and the analysis did not differentiate between fighters and noncombatants.
The most documented killings were in rural areas surrounding Damascus, with 17,800 people dead. Next was Homs, with 16,400; Aleppo, with 11,900; and Idlib, with 10,300.
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