More than 150,000 dead in Syria’s civil war, activists say

One third of casualties since 2011 were civilians, according to tally by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

A photo image released by the Syrian opposition's Shaam News Network shows a couple mourning in front of victims of a toxic gas attack allegedly carried out by pro-government forces in eastern Ghouta in August last year. AFP / August 21, 2013Show less

BEIRUT // At least 150,000 people have been killed in Syria’s three-year-old civil war, a third of them civilians, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Tuesday.

The UK-based Observatory, which monitors violence in Syria through a network of activists and medical or security sources, said that real toll was likely to be significantly higher at around 220,000 deaths.

Efforts to end the conflict by bringing together representatives of President Bashar Al Assad’s government and the opposition have so far failed. The United Nations peace mediator for Syria said last week that talks were unlikely to resume soon.

The last UN figures, released in July 2013, put the death toll at least 100,000, but the United Nations said in January it would stop updating the toll as conditions on the ground made it impossible to make accurate estimates.

The Observatory said it had registered the deaths of 150,344 people since March 18, 2011, when Mr Al Assad’s security forces first fired on protesters calling for reform.

The Observatory said nearly 38,000 rebels were killed including fighters from the Nusra Front, Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, an Al Qaeda splinter group which includes many foreign fighters.

More than 58,000 pro-Assad fighters were killed, including regular security forces and Syrian pro-government militia, as well as 364 fighters from the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah and 605 other foreign Shiite Muslims.

In addition to the fatalities, the Observatory said 18,000 people were missing after being detained by security forces, while another 8,000 people had been detained by rebels forces or kidnapped.

The Observatory said fighting between Assad loyalists and the rebels on Tuesday was concentrated in several opposition-held suburbs of the capital, Damascus, and the northern province of Aleppo, where rebels hold large swaths of territory and whole districts of Aleppo city.

The group also reported heavy clashes in the southern province of Deraa.

Syria’s official Sana news agency said terrorists, a term state media uses for rebels, have fired mortars into a government-held district of Aleppo, killing five people and wounding 26 others. In Damascus, one person died and two were injured in separate mortar attacks on the capital’s districts of Zablatani and Abassyeen, Sana said.

* Reuters with additional reporting by Associated Press