Syria: Regime killed 10 children daily in June

Some 10 children were killed every day in Syria at the hands of the regime’s forces in June, the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) said yesterday.

Of the total 1,732 civilians who were killed last month, 293 were children while 166 were women. The percentage of women and children killed by the regime’s forces reached 27 per cent of the total number of victims killed in June.

The report noted that at least 300 persons, including two children under the age of 18, were tortured to death in the regime’s prisons; an average of 10 people were tortured to death daily.

Since March 2011, the popular revolution that called for the ouster of Bashar Al-Assad’s regime has turned into an armed conflict after weapons were used to suppress it. As a result, three million Syrians sought refuge in neighbouring Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and Turkey, and six million were displaced within Syria, according to UN statistics.

The conflict has resulted in the death of more than 160,000 Syrians, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a human rights organisation based in Britain.