U.N.: Documented killings in Syria rise to over 92,000

Story highlights

More than 5,000 people a month are dying in Syria, the U.N. says

The actual death rate is believed to be much higher

More than 80% of the victims are male, U.N. says, and thousands are minors

CNN  — 

The overall documented death toll in devastated Syria has reached 92,901, the United Nations said Thursday.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay announced the figure, saying it was a result of an updated analysis carried out by specialists and covers the period between March 2011 and the end of April 2013.

“Unfortunately, as the study indicates, this is most likely a minimum casualty figure,” she said. “The true number of those killed is potentially much higher.”

The analysis shows a dramatic increase in the average monthly number of documented killings since the beginning of the conflict, from around 1,000 per month in the summer of 2011 to an average of more than 5,000 per month since July 2012, according to the U.N. report.

“This extremely high rate of killings, month after month, reflects the drastically deteriorating pattern of the conflict over the past year,” Pillay said.

Nearly 83% of the documented victims are male, while about 8% are female. The genders of the others were not indicated.

The report also tallies the deaths of more than 6,500 minors. More than a quarter of them were under the age of 10, the report said.

The analysis was not able to differentiate consistently between combatants and noncombatants, and around three-quarters of the reported killings do not record the victim’s age, according to the report.