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| "Sorry, we do not accept natural death cases" (freesyria.tumblr.com) |
As at 30 April 2013, at least 93,000 people have been killed in Syria
since the start of the conflict, according to new United Nations figures.
This represents a rise
of more than 30,000 since the UN last issued numbers covering the period to
November 2012.
“The constant flow of
killings continues at shockingly high levels -- with more than 5,000 killings
documented every month since last July,” from around 1,000 per month in the
summer of 2011, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay announced
Thursday.
“Unfortunately, as the
study indicates, this is most likely a minimum casualty figure. The true number
of those killed is potentially much higher,” she said
“This extremely high
rate of killings, month after month, reflects the drastically deteriorating
pattern of the conflict over the past year,” Pillay said.
Some 82.6 percent of
the victims documented so far are male, while 7.6 percent are female. The
gender of the victim is not indicated in 9.8 percent of cases.
Nevertheless, “the
killings of at least 6,561 minors, including at least 1,729 children under ten
years old, have been documented,” the High Commissioner said.
“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.”
While the study
stresses the accuracy of geographical patterns may be affected by variable
reporting by the different data sources, it shows that the greatest number of
documented killings has been recorded in the governorates of:
- Rif Dimashq (17,800)
- Homs (16,400)
- Aleppo (11,900)
- Idlib (10,300)
- Deraa (8,600)
- Hama (8,100)
- Damascus (6,400) and
- Deir Ezzor (5,700)
OHCHR called for an
immediate ceasefire "before tens of thousands more people are killed or
injured.”
