BEIRUT // The death toll of Syria's civil war has passed 100,000 since the start of the conflict more than two years ago.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has been tracking the toll through a network of activists in Syria, released its new figure yesterday at a time when hopes for a negotiated settlement to end the civil war were fading.
It said it had tallied a total of 100,191 deaths over the 27 months of the conflict but the observatory chief, Rami Abdul Rahman, said he expected the number was higher as neither side was totally forthcoming about its losses.
Of the dead, 36,661 were civilians, the group said.
On the government side, 25,407 were members of the armed forces of the Syrian president, Bashar Al Assad, 17,311 were pro-government fighters and 169 were militants from Lebanon's Hizbollah.
Deaths among Mr Al Assad's opponents included 13,539 rebels, 2,015 army defectors and 2,518 foreign fighters battling against the regime.
Entry of the foreign media into Syria is severely restricted and few reports from the fighting can be independently verified.
This month, the United Nations put the number of those killed in the conflict at 93,000 between March 2011 when the crisis started and the end of April this year.
The Syrian government has not released death tolls. State media published the names of the government's dead in the first months of the crisis but then stopped publishing its losses after the opposition became an armed insurgency.
Syria's conflict began as peaceful protests against Mr Al Assad's rule. It gradually became an armed conflict after the regime used the army to put down dissent and some opposition supporters took up weapons to fight government troops.
Even the most modest international efforts to end the Syrian conflict have failed.
The UN special envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, said on Tuesday that an international peace conference proposed by Russia and the United States would not take place until later in the summer, partly because of opposition disarray.
The fighting had increasingly been taking sectarian overtones. Sunnis dominate the rebel ranks while Mr Al Assad's regime is dominated by Alawites, an offshoot sect of Shiite Islam.
It has also spilt over Syria's borders, especially into Lebanon, where factions supporting opposing sides have clashed in the northern city of Tripoli and in the eastern Bekaa Valley. More than 200,000 Syrians have fled to Lebanon as a result of the fighting.
In the latest incident of the war crossing borders, at least 20 Syrians were injured yesterday in a stabbing attack when their vehicle was targeted by a group of unknown men in eastern Beirut.
"Three cars with tinted windows intercepted a minibus carrying 25 Syrians in the Jisr Al Wati neighbourhood. Eight men attacked the passengers with knives, injuring 20 of them," a police source said.
It is believed the group was headed to a studio to record Syrian folklore music.
The conflict has also polarised the region. Several Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia, back the rebels. Tehran, a Shiite powerhouse, supports Mr Al Assad.
Saudi Arabia is sending lethal aid to the rebels. The US also said it would provide arms to the opposition despite reluctance by the administration of the US president, Barack Obama, to send heavier weapons for fear they might end up in the hands of Al Qaeda-affiliated groups. Russia, Mr Al Assad's staunch supporter, had been providing his army with weapons.
In the Syrian capital Damascus the information minister, Omran Al Zoubi, lashed out at Saudi Arabia and accused the kingdom of backing "terrorists" after Riyadh condemned Damascus for enlisting Hizbollah fighters.
The remarks by Mr Al Zoubi were carried late on Tuesday by the state agency after the Saudi foreign minister Prince Saud Al Faisal met John Kerry, the US secretary of state, in Jeddah and charged that Syria faces a "foreign invasion".
Mr Al Zoubi fired back, saying Saudi diplomats had blood on their hands and were "trembling in fear of the victories of the Syrian army".
Yesterday, the observatory said the Syrian regime had tightened its grip on the border area with Lebanon after driving rebels out of the town of Talkalakh, which had a population of about 70,000 before the conflict.
The town is predominantly Sunni, but surrounded by 12 Alawite villages located within walking distance to the Lebanon border.
The government's takeover would likely affect the rebels' ability to bring supplies, fighters and weapons from Lebanon.
