Death Toll Hits 146,000

TIME.com reports that the death toll from the Syrian civil war has hit 146,000, with half of that number consisting of civilians. Earlier this week, UNICEF said that 1.2 million refugees, nearly half the civilians who have fled the country, are children. The website cites the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

“The report from the Observatory, an anti-government group that tracks violence across Syria, offers an updated death toll since the United Nations said in July that at least 100,000 people had been killed,” it says.

“The U.N. said in January that it would stop updating the figure, and it is impossible to verify the Observatory’s figure, collected from a network of sources in Syria. Roughly half of the 146,065 deaths were civilians, including 7,796 children. UNICEF said in a report this month that 1.2 million children have fled the country and 5.5 million Syrian children in and outside the country are in need of humanitarian assistance.”

Brahimi Says Syrian Elections Would Hinder Peace Talks

U.N. mediator Lakhdar Brahimi said that a Syrian election would further limit the effectiveness of peace talks between the Syrian government and opposition, Reuters reports. Analysts say Assad has been positioning himself to run for re-election later this spring.

“Assad has not yet announced whether he will stand for a third term, in defiance of protesters, rebel fighters and Western foes who have demanded he go. But in state-controlled parts of Damascus, preparations for his candidacy are unmistakable,” the wire says.

“‘There is to my knowledge no official declaration yet in Damascus that this election is going to take place, but there are a lot of activities that seem to indicate that there is an election,’ Brahimi told reporters after briefing the U.N. Security Council. ‘If there is an election, then my suspicion is that the opposition, all the oppositions, will probably not be interested in talking to the government.’”

In Aleppo, a War of ‘Psychopaths’

Telegraph correspondent Richard Spencer reports from Aleppo province on the increasing brutality of the war, notably the behavior of extremists, of which he says: “It really is that psychopathic.”

“Even as I write, the great and glorious city of Aleppo, one of the oldest beacons of human civilisation, is being destroyed. Its Great Umayyad Mosque is already in ruins, its suburbs flattened daily by a new weapon that is, by virtue of its extraordinary mixture of primitive simplicity and sophisticated delivery, a form of psychopathy all unto itself: the barrel bomb,” he writes.

“We have no idea why the regime uses it – perhaps it is running short of Russian missiles, or perhaps it does not want to waste them on civilians. All we know is that at one point in January, 30 of these crude devices, barrels stuffed with TNT and shrapnel, were raining down on civilian areas of the city each day. Thousands of people have been killed. Any doubt that this is a deliberate attempt to instill terror can be set aside: in one suburb, they were accompanied by leaflets saying that all residents should leave.”

Opposition Says Allies Must Honor Weapons Promises

The BBC reports that the Syrian National Council has called on its allies to uphold what it says was a promise to provide heavy weapons if the Syrian government was responsible for the failure of the Geneva peace talks.

Its president, Ahmad Jarba, also “blamed the Syrian government for the presence of Islamist extremists in the conflict, and promised to kick them out of Syria, as he claimed his forces had in several provinces already. ‘Our main enemy is the regime that ruled this country for 50 years with fire and iron,” he said. “When the revolution kicked off, there were no extremists or terrorists, there were [only] Syrian people looking only for their freedom,’” he said.

“While he admitted that the Assad government was the greater enemy he insisted that ‘regarding the terrorists, we fought and we will keep fighting against them … because we reject them and the Syrian people reject them as well.’”

Suggested Reads from Our Editorial Team

Time:Ordeal of a Dying Child Captures the Tragedy of Syria

Washington Post:In Syria, Rebel With a Cause

NY Times:Amid Preparations, Mediator Says Syria Vote Would Doom Talks

Al Jazeera:Syrian Rebels Claim Alawites’ Kidnapping