Over 120,000 pro-Assad fighters killed in Syria

More than 120,000 fighters supporting Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad have been killed in the civil war since 2011, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the war, said yesterday.

More than 200,000 people have been killed while millions more fled their homes after a war broke out in the country following the government’s suppression of peaceful protests demanding reforms in 2011.

The London based watchdog said that nearly 11,000 government security forces and allied militia were killed in the five months after Al-Assad’s inauguration speech at the start of his third term.

It pointed out that approximately 5,631 members of the armed forces have been killed in acts of violence since the speech. The warfare methods used include shelling, gunfights, aircraft crashes, suicide attacks, snipers, executions and car bombs.

The Observatory added that 4,492 fighters from loyalist militias were killed as well as 735 fighters from Arab, Iranian and Asian origins and 91 from the Lebanese Shia group, Hezbollah.

Shia fighters from Iraq and Lebanon joined the war in neighbouring Syria in defence of the Syrian regime against fighters seeking to topple him.

Al-Assad began a third term last July after he won the election which was described as a farce by the opposition.

The exact death toll has been difficult to verify but the figures released by the Observatory are widely viewed as credible.

In August, the UN estimated that more than 190,000 people have been killed in the war.