Syria death toll tops 100,000, activist group says

A Syrian activist group says more than 100,000 people have been killed since the start of the country’s conflict 27 months ago.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has been tracking the death toll through a network of activists in Syria, said Wednesday that 100,191 have died. Of those, 36,661 are civilians, it says.

On the government side, 25,407 are members of President Bashar Assad’s armed forces, 17,311 pro-government fighters and 169 Hezbollah militants, who have fought alongside army troops.

Deaths among Assad’s opponents included 13,539 rebels, 2,015 army defectors and 2,518 foreign fighters battling against the regime.

Earlier this month, the Observatory, which remains a pro-opposition organization, first said its statistics showed Assad’s backers — both uniformed troops and unofficial militia members — represented a far higher proportion of the deaths from the drawn-out crisis than has been previously reported.

Also in June, the U.N. raised its official tally of those killed in the conflict to 93,000 between March 2011 when the crisis started and end of April this year.

CBS News