More Than 230,000 Killed in Syria Conflict
Syria’s relentless and brutal conflict has claimed the lives of over 230,000 people, including almost 11,500 children, since it broke out in 2011, AFP reports.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claims it has documented the deaths of 230,618 people, including 69,494 civilians, among them 11,493 children and 7,371 women.
The majority of deaths were combatants, with 49,106 regime forces and 36,464 government loyalists among the dead.
The loyalist fighters killed were mostly from local militias, but also included members of Hezbollah and Shiite fighters from other countries.
The Observatory documented the deaths of 41,116 rebels, Syrian jihadists and Kurdish fighters.
The group noted that the full death toll is likely much higher than the deaths it has been able to count.
Exact figures have been difficult to verify, but the Observatory is widely cited as a source of conflict statistics. The U.N. stopped calculating the death toll in January last year.
May was the bloodiest month so far this year in Syria, with at least 6,657 people killed throughout the country, the AFP reports. The toll includes at least 1,285 civilians, more than half of whom were killed in government airstrikes.
The outgoing U.N. aid chief Valerie Amos two weeks ago urged world powers to take collective action to put an end to the carnage in Syria, saying that it had descended into deeper depths of despair than had ever been thought possible.
Syrian Rebels Capture Key Regime Military Base in Southern Syria
Syrian rebels claim they have captured a major military base in the south of the country, marking the latest in a string of defeats for Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, AP reports.
The Western-backed rebel alliance, the Southern Front, overran the army base known as the 52nd Brigade in the southern Daraa province, following a day of fierce clashes that killed rebel and government fighters.
“The base lies near a major highway running from Damascus to Syria’s southern border with Jordan and is also near the frontier with neighboring Sweida province, which is largely regime-controlled,” the AFP reports.
Less than 60 miles south of Damascus and near the border with Jordan and Israel, the southern region is one of the last major footholds of rebel groups, unlike in the north, where al-Qaida’s Syrian affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State have seized large swathes of territory.
However, Jabhat al-Nusra, which has ousted pro-Western rebels in the north, also has a presence in the south and hasoccasionally joined the Southern Front in its battle against government forces.
Syrian rebel forces under the banner of the Southern Front have inflicted significant defeats against the regime in the past three months, notably by seizing the Nasib border crossing with Jordan in April. They have coordinated their operations against the Assad regime from a joint command center in Jordan.
“They aim to carve out a swathe of territory leading to the doorstep of Assad’s seat of power in Damascus,” the Guardian writes.
The loss of the base is another blow to Assad’s forces, which have lost territory to rebel alliances including Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria’s northwestern Idlib province and the Islamic State in the country’s center.
Meanwhile, Syria’s prime minister announced on Monday that the government would give a monthly bonus to soldiers fighting on the front lines, a pay hike that could boost morale after a string of setbacks for regime forces.
Hezbollah Claims It Repels ISIS Attack on Lebanon–Syria Border
Jihadist militants, including Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS, entrenched in the strategic Qalamoun area, have continued to launch offensives inside Lebanon, including an attack in August 2014 in which fighters from Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State group briefly seized the eastern Lebanese town of Arsal and kidnapped several dozen members of the Lebanese security forces.
Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed Shiite militant group and key ally of President Assad, has been on the offensive in Qalamoun for weeks and has captured territory from Jabhat al-Nusra, AP reports.
The group has played a key role in the battle and has sent hundreds of its fighters into Syria to assist government forces.
“While Assad has suffered setbacks in the northwest, southwest and east, he has tightened his grip over the border zone with Lebanon thanks to a joint operation over the last month with the Iranian-backed Lebanese group, Hezbollah,” Reuters reported yesterday.
“With the Nusra Front almost defeated in the area, a major battle is expected between Hezbollah and the Islamic State group,” AP writes.
On Monday, the group’s TV station, al-Manar, said that Hezbollah fighters and Syrian troops have so far captured half of Qalamoun.
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