Search and rescue officers work at a damaged building at the site of blast in the town of Reyhanli in Hatay province, near the Turkish-Syrian border, yesterday.
BEIRUT: More than 94,000 people have been killed in more than two years of conflict in Syria, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in a newly-revised toll yesterday.
The watchdog said it revised the toll — two days after it announced a tally of 82,257 dead — after receiving new information from regime-controlled Alawite areas of the Sunni-majority country.
“Based on this information, the number of martyrs and dead killed since the beginning of the Syrian revolution is more than 94,000,” it said in a statement.
The group said it had received new figures from areas, including Tartus and Latakia — strongholds on the Mediterranean coast of the Alawite minority to which President Bashar Al Assad belongs.
The information showed “that the number of casualties among the ranks of the Alawite community was much higher than the observatory’s statistics which were published two days ago”.
On Sunday, the Britain-based watchdog, which relies on a vast network of activists and medics on the ground, put the death toll since the March 2011 start of the anti-regime uprising at 82,257, including 34,473 civilians.
Meanwhile, plans to convene a new peace conference on Syria were gathering pace amid a round of intense diplomacy, as US officials said the regime appeared ready to take part.
US Secretary of State John Kerry urged Assad not to squander the opportunity to come to the table for negotiations, insisting “enormous plans are being laid” for what has been dubbed Geneva II.
In a possible sign of progress, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told Kerry that Assad had “already given him the names of people who will negotiate,” Kerry said. He and Lavrov have been working in tandem since announcing in Moscow last week plans for a conference to map a path towards a political transition and ending the bloody conflict now in its third year.
Who will attend the conference, where it will be held and when, are yet to be determined, State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said.
Kerry warned earlier in a press conference in Stockholm that if Assad made another “gross miscalculation” and decided not to attend, then it was “clear the opposition will be receiving additional support.” Ventrell said “the bottom line is that our assistance to the Syrian opposition is on an upward trajectory”. Agencies
