Almost 93,000 people killed in Syria war

Damascus. Almost 93,000 people were killed in Syria’s conflict by the end of April this year, but the true number could be “potentially much higher”, the United Nations human rights office says.The exact figure released on Thursday - 92,901 people - is much higher than the UN’s last death toll back in January of 59,000 people.“The constant flow of killings continues at shockingly high levels,” said Navi Pillay, the UN high commissioner for human rights. “This is most likely a minimum casualty figure. The true number of those killed is potentially much higher.”An average of more than 5,000 people have been killed every month since last July, while rural Damascus and Aleppo have recorded the highest tolls since November, the report said in its latest study compiling documented deaths.Among the victims were at least 6,561 children, including 1,729 children younger than 10.Al Jazeera’s diplomatic editor James Bays, reporting from the UN headquarters in New York, described the figures as “staggering”.The UN has not had much access to Syria, and therefore has been unable to count bodies. Instead, the body did a statistical survey.“They have gone through sources which had the names, dates and locations [of those killed],” our correspondent said, adding that the UN acknowleges it has “underreported the number of deaths”.Meanwhile, Syrian rebels reportedly killed at least 60 people, including civilians government loyalists, in a battle in Halta, a Sunni-majority village in the country’s east, activists said.The fighting over the past few days targetted members of the Shia community, highlighting the increasingly sectarian nature of the country’s civil war.The opposition fighters reportedly stormed and burned civilian homes in the village in the eastern Deir Azzor province. The attack is said to be in retaliation for an earlier assault by Shias from Hatla that killed four opposition fighters.A Syrian government official denounced the attack on the Shia-section of the Sunni-majority Hatla village as a “massacre” of civilians, the Associated Press news agency reported on Thursday. A video posted online by rebels on Tuesday, entitled “The storming and cleansing of Hatla”, showed dozens of fighters carrying black flags celebrating and firing guns in the streets of a small town as smoke curled above several buildings.