UN Claims 191,369 Killed in Syrian Civil War
The United Nations published its updated figures on the number of deaths caused by the three-and-a-half year Syrian civil war: 191,369. The release of the updated statistics was a relatively low-key affair. It did not prompt calls for mass demonstrations throughout Europe and the United States in sympathy for the beleaguered Syrian people; nor did it generate expressions of heightened outrage or demands for tribunals and investigations from international human rights groups or UN organizations. Such actions are strictly reserved for the situation in Gaza, where over the same time frame over 2,000 have died as a result of recurring hostilities between Israel and Hamas.
According to the Associated Press, the UN’s top human rights official, Navi Pillay, “criticized the world’s ‘paralysis’ over the fighting in Syria, which ‘has dropped off the international radar’ in the face of so many other armed conflicts around the world.” That would be the same Navi Pillay who recently criticized the United States for failing to assist Hamas in obtaining the same missile defense system as that developed by the Israelis.
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