UNHR study documented At least 92,901 cases of individuals killed in Syria between March 2011 and the end of April 20, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay announced Thursday. “The constant flow of killings continues at shockingly high levels – with more than 5,000 killings documented every month since last July, including a total of just under 27,000 new killings since 1 December,” Pillay said. “Unfortunately, as the study indicates, this is most likely a minimum casualty figure. The true number of those killed is potentially much higher.” Pillay added. The latest study -- which updates an earlier one that compiled some 60,000 documented deaths up to 30 November 2012 -- was conducted using a combined list of 263,055 reported killings, fully identified by the name of the victim, as well as the date and location of the death. Each reported killing was compared to all the other reported killings in order to identify duplicates. The analysis shows a dramatic increase in the average monthly number of documented killings since the beginning of the conflict, from around 1,000 per month in the summer of 2011 to an average of more than 5,000 per month since July 2012 (during the peak period from July to October 2012, the number exceeded 6,000 per month). The study stresses that 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 Governates of Rural Damascus (17,800), Homs (16,400), Aleppo (11,900) and Idlib (10,300); followed by Daraa (8,600), Hama (8,100), Damascus (6,400) and Deir ez-Zor (5,700). 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. The analysis was not able to differentiate consistently between combatants and non-combatants, and around three-quarters of the reported killings do not record the victim's age. “I urge the parties to declare an immediate ceasefire before tens of thousands more people are killed or injured,” Pillay said.
