BEIRUT // More than 130,000 people have been killed since the beginning of the conflict in Syria nearly three years ago, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said yesterday.
In a new tally, the UK-based group, which relies on a network of activists on the ground, said 130,433 people have been killed since the conflict began in March 2011, including 46,266 civilians.
The newest casualties were recorded yesterday when at least 10 people, including two children, were killed in Syria’s northern city of Aleppo after a regime tank shell smashed into a bus.
The Observatory said the shell hit a bus in the Tariq Al Bab neighbourhood, adding that the toll could rise because a number of people had been seriously wounded.
The group said a woman was also among those killed in the blast.
A video filmed by activists and uploaded by the Observatory on the sharing website YouTube shows chaotic scenes, with the back of a red public bus ablaze and spewing thick plumes of black smoke.
Round loaves of bread apparently sent flying from a street stall litter the ground along with rubble from a nearby building and glass from the windows of the bus and a minivan partially destroyed in the blast.
Groups of men carry injured passengers away, some trailing blood on the ground as they are moved.
Others lift a body that appeared to be partly burnt in the blast, missing its legs.
Agence France-Presse