A civilian rides a bicycle past a cemetery in the rebel held besieged Douma neighbourhood of Damascus, Syria January 3, 2017. REUTERS/Bassam Khabieh

BEIRUT (Reuters) - The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said on Monday there are so far about 465,000 people killed and missing in Syria’s civil war.

The war began six years ago on Wednesday with protests against President Bashar al-Assad’s government. It has since dragged in global and regional powers, allowed Islamic State to grab huge tracts of territory and caused the biggest refugee crisis since the second world war.

The Observatory said it had documented the deaths of more than 321,000 people since the start of the war and more than 145,000 others had been reported as missing.

Among those killed are more than 96,000 civilians, said the Observatory, which has used a network of contacts across the country to maintain a count of casualties since near the start of the conflict.

It said government forces and their allies had killed more than 83,500 civilians, including more than 27,500 in air strikes and 14,600 under torture in prison.

Rebel shelling had killed more than 7,000 civilians, the Observatory said.

The Islamic State jihadist group has killed more than 3,700 civilians, air strikes by the U.S.-led coalition have killed 920 civilians and Turkey, which is backing rebels in northern Syria, has killed more than 500 civilians, it added.

Syria’s government and Russia both deny targeting civilians or using torture or extrajudicial killings. Most rebel groups and Turkey also deny targeting civilians. The U.S.-led coalition says it tries hard to avoid civilian casualties and always investigates reports that it has done so. </s> Syria's war has killed just over 320,000 people since it erupted six years ago, a monitor said Monday, noting that a fragile ceasefire had helped to slow the rising death toll.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it had recorded the deaths of 321,358 people since the conflict broke out in March 2011 with protests against President Bashar al-Assad.

The toll represented an increase of about 9,000 since December, when government ally Russia and rebel backer Turkey brokered a nationwide cessation of hostilities.

"There have been fewer people dying in the three months since the ceasefire was put into place," said Observatory Rami Abdel Rahman.

"The deaths haven't stopped, but they have been slower in the past few months," he said.

The new toll included more than 96,000 civilians, among them over 17,400 children and nearly 11,000 women.

The Observatory said just over 60,900 government soldiers were killed, as well as 45,000 Syrian militiamen and over 8,000 foreign fighters loyal to Assad's government.

Fighting also killed nearly 55,000 rebels and just as many jihadist fighters, most of them from the Islamic State group or former Al-Qaeda affiliate Fateh al-Sham Front, but also from smaller groups.

Abdel Rahman told AFP that his team had worked hard to verify the identities of 4,000 victims whose identities had been unknown.

"Most were civilians, but there were approximately 300 rebel fighters among them," he said.

While Syria's conflict began with anti-Assad demonstrations, a violent crackdown by the government morphed it into a war that has drawn in international powers and seen the rise of jihadist groups. </s> BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian authorities have killed at least 13,000 people since the start of the 2011 uprising in mass hangings at a prison north of Damascus known to detainees as "the slaughterhouse," Amnesty International said in a report Tuesday.

It covers the period from 2011 to 2015, when Amnesty said 20-50 people were hanged each week at Saydnaya Prison in killings authorized by senior Syrian officials, including deputies of President Bashar Assad, and carried out by military police.

The report referred to the killings as a "calculated campaign of extrajudicial execution."

Amnesty has recorded at least 35 different methods of torture in Syria since the late 1980s, practices that only increased since 2011, said Lynn Maalouf, deputy director for research at Amnesty's regional office in Beirut.

Other rights groups have found evidence of massive torture leading to death in Syrian detention facilities. In a report last year, Amnesty found that more than 17,000 people have died of torture and ill-treatment in custody across Syria since 2011, an average rate of more than 300 deaths a month.

Those figures are comparable to battlefield deaths in Aleppo, one of the fiercest war zones in Syria, where 21,000 were killed in the province since 2011.

"The horrors depicted in this report reveal a hidden, monstrous campaign, authorized at the highest levels of the Syrian government, aimed at crushing any form of dissent within the Syrian population," Maalouf said.

While the most recent data is from 2015, Maalouf said there is no reason to believe the practice has stopped since then, with thousands more probably killed. </s> The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the majority of the deaths, 746, were Islamic State fighters and that the actual figure could be much higher. Islamic State has seized tracts of territory in Syria and neighboring Iraq, where it has also been targeted by U.S.-led forces since July.

Eight of the civilians killed were children, the Observatory said. It said 68 members of al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front were also killed in the air strikes, which started early on Sept. 23.

Coalition strikes have hit the Syrian provinces of Aleppo, Deir al-Zor, Hasaka, Raqqa and Idlib, the Observatory said.

The United States has said it takes reports of civilian casualties seriously and says it has a process to investigate each allegation.

Washington justified its action in Syria under Article 51 of the U.N. Charter, which covers an individual or collective right to self-defense against armed attack.

Around 200,000 people have been killed in Syria's conflict, which is now in its fourth year, according to the United Nations. </s> BEIRUT — Syrian authorities have killed at least 13,000 people since the start of the 2011 uprising in mass hangings at a prison north of Damascus known to detainees as "the slaughterhouse," Amnesty International said in a report Tuesday.

It covers the period from 2011 to 2015, when Amnesty said 20-50 people were hanged each week at Saydnaya Prison in killings authorized by senior Syrian officials, including deputies of President Bashar Assad, and carried out by military police.

The report referred to the killings as a "calculated campaign of extrajudicial execution."

Amnesty has recorded at least 35 different methods of torture in Syria since the late 1980s, practices that only increased since 2011, said Lynn Maalouf, deputy director for research at Amnesty's regional office in Beirut.

Other rights groups have found evidence of massive torture leading to death in Syrian detention facilities. In a report last year, Amnesty found that more than 17,000 people have died of torture and ill-treatment in custody across Syria since 2011, an average rate of more than 300 deaths a month.

Those figures are comparable to battlefield deaths in Aleppo, one of the fiercest war zones in Syria, where 21,000 were killed in the province since 2011.

"The horrors depicted in this report reveal a hidden, monstrous campaign, authorized at the highest levels of the Syrian government, aimed at crushing any form of dissent within the Syrian population," Maalouf said.

While the most recent data is from 2015, Maalouf said there is no reason to believe the practice has stopped since then, with thousands more probably killed.

"These executions take place after a sham trial that lasts over a minute or two minutes, but they are authorized by the highest levels of authority," including the Grand Mufti, a top religious authority in Syria, and the defense minister, she said.

Syrian government officials rarely comment on allegations of torture and mass killings. In the past, they have denied reports of massacres documented by international human rights groups, describing them as propaganda.

The chilling accounts in Tuesday's report came from interviews with 31 former detainees and over 50 other officials and experts, including former guards and judges.

According to the findings, detainees were told they would be transferred to civilian detention centers but were taken instead to another building in the facility and hanged.

"They walked in the 'train,' so they had their heads down and were trying to catch the shirt of the person in front of them. The first time I saw them, I was horrified. They were being taken to the slaughterhouse," Hamid, a former detainee, told Amnesty.

Another former detainee, Omar Alshogre, told The Associated Press the guards would come to his cell, sometimes three times a week, and call out detainees by name. </s> A Syrian government soldier rides a military vehicle near a mosque, after taking control of Aleppo's Al-Haidariya neighbourhood, Syria in this handout picture provided by SANA on November 28, 2016. SANA/Handout via REUTERS

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Rescue workers said more than 45 people had been killed in artillery bombardment of rebel-held eastern Aleppo on Wednesday, and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said more than 50,000 people had been displaced by the fighting.

The Civil Defense said in a message posted on its Telegram account that dozens more people had been wounded in the artillery attack it said had hit people displaced from eastern Aleppo. Most of the dead were women and children, it said.

The Observatory’s toll of 50,000 displaced was more than double a figure of 20,000 given by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on Tuesday. </s> Around 100 soldiers lost their life in North-west Syria in the fight between the pro-Syrian government army and rebels. This was revelaed by the monitoring agency. The England based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claimed that the fighting in the northern Hama province has killed 51 pro-government soldiers and 45 rebels.

The Syrian government which is supported by Russia has intensified the attack and air strikes against the rebels and jihadists fighting against the Bashar Al Assad’s regime. The Syrian government has intensified its attacks in Idlib province and the parts of neighbouring Hama, Aleppo and Latakia where Syria’s former Al-Qaeda affiliate Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.

According to the Observatory, since April of this year around 490 civilians were killed in the air strikes. Apart from thisaround 682 pro-government forces and 812 rebellions killed in the fighting. The civil war in Syria has killed more than 370,000 people and displaced millions since it started in 2011. </s> Syrian authorities have killed at least 13,000 people since the start of the 2011 uprising in mass hangings at a prison north of Damascus known to detainees as "the slaughterhouse," Amnesty International said in a report Tuesday. It covers the period from 2011 to 2015, when Amnesty said 20-50 people were hanged each week at Saydnaya Prison in killings authorized by senior Syrian officials, including deputies of President Bashar Assad, and carried out by military police.

Start the conversation, or Read more at HeraldNet. </s> At least five civilians were killed by Russian and Syrian government warplanes that targeted Syria's northwest as residents marked the holiday of Eid al-Fitr.

A local source told Anadolu Agency the five people died on Wednesday in air attacks targeting the town of Kansafra and three villages in Idlib.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor put the death toll at 10, saying two children were among those killed.

Another civilian died in shelling by government forces on the northern Hama countryside, also held by rebels, said the group, which relies on a network of sources on the ground in Syria.

Government air attacks also hit a motorcycle in the Idlib town of Maaret al-Numan, killing a woman and her two children, said the Observatory.

Air war

Wednesday's attacks come amid an escalation in violence in the country's northwest that is held by Syria's former al-Qaeda affiliate Hay'et Tahrir al-Sham.

A September deal was supposed to avert a full-out government offensive on Idlib province and adjacent areas, home to about three million people, nearly half of whom have been displaced from other parts of Syria.

But the government and its ally Russia have since late April ramped up deadly air raids and rocket fire on the region, and fighters have clashed on its edges.

The bombardment of Idlib province and neighbouring areas has killed more than 300 people since late April, according to the Observatory.

It also displaced nearly 270,000 people in May alone, according to the United Nations.

A total of 24 health facilities and 35 schools have been hit in the latest escalation, according to the UN's humanitarian office.

Analysts predict that President Bashar al-Assad and his allies will continue to chip away at the area, but not unleash a major assault that would create chaos on Turkey's doorstep.

The conflict in Syria has killed hundreds of thousands of people since it started in 2011 with millions displaced.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the total number of people killed and missing in Syria's war is now 465,000.