More than 120K killed in Syria war

BEIRUT (AP) — A Syrian activist group says more than 120,000 people have been killed since the start of the country's civil war nearly three years ago.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has been tracking the death toll through a network of activists in Syria, said today that 120,296 people have died. Of those, it said 61,067 are civilians, including 6,365 children.

On the government side, it said 29,954 are members of President Bashar Assad's armed forces, 18,678 are pro-government fighters and 187 are Lebanese Hezbollah militants.

Also among the dead it said were 2,202 army defectors and some 5,375 opposition fighters, many of them foreigners.

On July 25, the U.N. estimated 100,000 have died in the conflict since March 2011. It has not updated that figure since.