Syria death toll jumps to 500,000

A decade of war in Syria has left nearly half a million people dead, a war monitor said yesterday, in a new toll that includes 100,000 recently confirmed deaths. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the conflict has claimed 494,438 lives since it erupted in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-government protests. The previous tally, issued by the Observatory in March this year, stood at more than 388,000 dead. The war monitor has since confirmed an additional 105,015 deaths following months of documentation efforts supported by its network of sources on the ground.