Damascus (AsiaNews / Agencies) - More than 240 thousand people have been killed since the beginning of the conflict in Syria. About 12 thousand of these were children; almost 72 thousand civilians; more than 88 thousand regular army soldierse and about 34 thousand Islamic extremists. This is reported in the recent data released by Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an organization based in England but which has an extensive network of contacts on the ground.
Since March 2011, the date of the beginning of the clashes between Assad's government and a varied coalition of opponents, 240,381 people have died. On June 9 the count had reached 230,618. 11,964 children lost their lives, while the number of civilians who have died are 71,781. A third of the victims were soldiers fighting for Assad, or 88,616 units: of these, 50,570 were regular soldiers and the rest allied fighters.
As for the rebel fighters, 42,384 soldiers and 34,375 foreign jihadists were killed. The identity of the 3,225 dead on the field are still unknown. The fate of about 30 thousand people who are missing is still unknown: of these, 20 thousand are believed to be in government jails.
According to UN figures, there are about 10 million displaced. At least 4 million have chosen neighboring countries - Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq - while another 150 thousand have applied to the European Union for asylum. Within Europe, Germany has the largest contingent of refugees (28,500) while in absolute numbers Turkey - 1,758,092 with Syrian refugees - is the nation that has accepted the most.
The other 6.5 million are internally displaced, people who have had to abandon everything but have chosen to remain in the country.