UN rights chief slams Syria 'paralysis'
More than 191,000 people have died in Syria, UN rights chief Navi Pillay said yesterday, lashing out at "international paralysis" on the nearly three-and-a-half year conflict.
After chiding the UN Security Council on Thursday for what she called a lack of resolve in ending crises, Pillay said in a statement the dwindling global interest in Syria was "scandalous".
"I deeply regret that, given the onset of so many other armed conflicts in this period of global destabilisation, the fighting in Syria and its dreadful impact on millions of civilians has dropped off the international radar," she said.
"The killers, destroyers and torturers in Syria have been empowered and emboldened by the international paralysis."
She gave a toll of 191,369 deaths recorded between March 2011 when the war broke out and April this year, but said it was likely an underestimate.
Among the dead were 9,000 children.
Meanwhile a monitoring group said yesterday that at least 70 IS jihadist fighters have been killed in 48 hours of clashes with Syrian army troops in the northern province of Raqa.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said IS had launched a major push late Tuesday on Tabqa military airport, the last remaining army stronghold in Raqa, which has been largely overrun by the jihadists.
The assailants had carried out car bomb attacks in their assault but failed to make any breakthrough, the Britain-based group said.
"At least 70 IS fighters have been lost since early Wednesday in regime air raids, Scud missile blasts and mine explosions," Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.
He said the military was also using barrel bombs to attack IS from the air, the same improvised and crude weaponry it has deployed against rebel-held areas of the northern city of Aleppo with deadly impact.
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