U.N. Says Nearly 93,000 Killed in Syrian Conflict

By AP / John Heilprin and Sarah El DeebJune 13, 2013

(BEIRUT) — Nearly 93,000 people have been confirmed killed in Syria since an uprising against President Bashar Assad began more than two years ago, the U.N. said Thursday, a sharp rise in the death toll as the fighting turns increasingly sectarian and the carnage gripping the country appears unstoppable.
The grim benchmark came as Assad’s regime has scored a series of battlefield successes against the rebels seeking his ouster and international efforts to forge a round of peace talks have stalled. After regaining control of the strategic town of Qusair near the border with Lebanon, regime forces appear set on securing control of the central provinces of Homs and Hama, a linchpin area linking Damascus with regime strongholds on the Mediterranean coast, and Aleppo to the north.
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In continued violence, a mortar round slammed into an area near the runway at the Damascus International Airport Thursday, briefly disrupting flights to and from the Syrian capital, officials said, a few weeks after the government announced it had secured the airport road that had been targeted by rebels in the past. It was the first known attack to hit inside the airport, located south of the capital.
The country’s transportation minister Mahmoud Ibrahim Said told Syrian TV that a mortar round fired by “terrorists” struck near a warehouse, breaking its windows and wounding a worker there.
He said the attack delayed the landing of two incoming flights, from Latakia and Kuwait, as well as the takeoff of a Syrian flight to Baghdad. No passengers were harmed and no planes were damaged, he said. The regime refers to rebels as “terrorists.”
Tarek Wahibi, head of operations at the airport, said takeoff and landing then resumed normally.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said rebel fighters had targeted the airport with homemade rockets.
State-run TV reported Thursday that troops have secured four towns in the central province of Hama after killing 60 members of al-Qaeda-linked group Jabhat al-Nusra. It said the towns included Masaadah, Abu Hanaya and Abu Jbeilat.


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