Death Toll in Syrian Conflict Surpasses 11,000
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KARIM SAHIB/AFP/Getty Images(DAMASCUS, Syria) — A human rights monitoring group has boosted estimates of the death toll in Syria since President Bashar al-Assad began cracking down on his political enemies in March 2011.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights now says that 11,117 people have died over the past 13 months — two-thirds of them civilians, while the rest are largely military fighters and gunmen. Previous estimates put the death toll at over 9,000.
It is virtually impossible to accurately verify all the casualty figures since the media has largely been kept out of Syria during the conflict, and most of the reports have come from human right groups who do not side with the al-Assad government.
A ceasefire enacted last week that was supposed to have stopped the violence has only slowed the killing, with at least 55 having been slain over the past several days.
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