The death toll in Syria's three-year civil conflict has reached more than 160,000 people, including more than 8,000 children, a human rights organization reported Monday.
A total far higher than the last reliable count, about 162,402 deaths have been documented after the conflict started in March 2011, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, the Associated Press reported.
The figure includes civilians, members of the Syrian military, foreign fighters and rebels who rose up against the government of President Bashar Assad
Although 100,000 people had reportedly been killed in July, the United Nations had stopped updating its count since the information on the death tolls could no longer be verified.
The human rights organization put its count at 162,402. That included almost 54,000 civilians, more than 37,000 Syrian soldiers, about 25,000 pro-government fighters and almost 27,000 rebels.
The harrowing figures reflect the relentless bloodletting in a civil war that appears no closer to being resolved, Ottawa Citizen reported.
"The observatory said a third of those killed, or 53,978, were non-combatants, including 8,607 children," Punch reported.
"Over 60,000 of the dead were fighting for President Bashar al-Assad, including 37,685 regular soldiers, 23,485 members of loyalist militias and 1,662 mainly Shiite foreign fighters."
The rebels, who are mostly Sunni Muslims, have been pitted against the Assad regime, which is dominated by the Alawite sect of Shiite Islam, in the civil war.
Among the opposition, Islamic extremists play an increasing role.
Although the Syrian conflict started with peaceful anti-government demonstrations in March 2011, it degenerated into violence as government forces cracked down on protesters.
Since then, however, it has tapped into sectarian tensions and regional rivalries.
The Syrian crisis has also uprooted some 6.5 million people from their homes, forced 2.7 million to flee the country, laid waste to cities and towns alike, and unleashed sectarian hatreds that have rippled across the region.
