BEIRUT: A blast on a bus in Syria’s Homs on Tuesday killed one person and injured two others, a witness told a foreign news agency.

Syrian state news agency SANA reported that what it called terrorists were behind the blast in the Wadi al-Dhahb district in the southeast of the city. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, also said there were casualties.

The explosion follows a coordinated attack by insurgents in Homs city center last month that killed scores including a senior security official, and an agreement on Monday for rebels to leave their last enclave in the city.

The attack in Homs on February 25 was carried out by Tahrir al-Sham, a alliance whose main group is Fateh al-Sham, the former al Qaeda offshoot in Syria.

The same group also said it was behind a double suicide bombing in Damascus on Saturday that killed dozens of people, mostly Shia Muslim pilgrims.

Analysts who follow Syria have predicted that as rebels fighting to oust President Bashar al-Assad suffer military reverses they will increasingly turn to guerrilla attacks in territory controlled by the government.</s>A civilian rides a bicycle past a cemetery in the rebel held besieged Douma neighbourhood of Damascus, Syria January 3, 2017. REUTERS/Bassam Khabieh

BEIRUT (Reuters) - The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said on Monday there are so far about 465,000 people killed and missing in Syria’s civil war.

The war began six years ago on Wednesday with protests against President Bashar al-Assad’s government. It has since dragged in global and regional powers, allowed Islamic State to grab huge tracts of territory and caused the biggest refugee crisis since the second world war.

The Observatory said it had documented the deaths of more than 321,000 people since the start of the war and more than 145,000 others had been reported as missing.

Among those killed are more than 96,000 civilians, said the Observatory, which has used a network of contacts across the country to maintain a count of casualties since near the start of the conflict.

It said government forces and their allies had killed more than 83,500 civilians, including more than 27,500 in air strikes and 14,600 under torture in prison.

Rebel shelling had killed more than 7,000 civilians, the Observatory said.

The Islamic State jihadist group has killed more than 3,700 civilians, air strikes by the U.S.-led coalition have killed 920 civilians and Turkey, which is backing rebels in northern Syria, has killed more than 500 civilians, it added.

Syria’s government and Russia both deny targeting civilians or using torture or extrajudicial killings. Most rebel groups and Turkey also deny targeting civilians. The U.S.-led coalition says it tries hard to avoid civilian casualties and always investigates reports that it has done so.</s>Syria's war has killed just over 320,000 people since it erupted six years ago, a monitor said Monday, noting that a fragile ceasefire had helped to slow the rising death toll.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it had recorded the deaths of 321,358 people since the conflict broke out in March 2011 with protests against President Bashar al-Assad.

The toll represented an increase of about 9,000 since December, when government ally Russia and rebel backer Turkey brokered a nationwide cessation of hostilities.

"There have been fewer people dying in the three months since the ceasefire was put into place," said Observatory Rami Abdel Rahman.

"The deaths haven't stopped, but they have been slower in the past few months," he said.

The new toll included more than 96,000 civilians, among them over 17,400 children and nearly 11,000 women.

The Observatory said just over 60,900 government soldiers were killed, as well as 45,000 Syrian militiamen and over 8,000 foreign fighters loyal to Assad's government.

Fighting also killed nearly 55,000 rebels and just as many jihadist fighters, most of them from the Islamic State group or former Al-Qaeda affiliate Fateh al-Sham Front, but also from smaller groups.

Abdel Rahman told AFP that his team had worked hard to verify the identities of 4,000 victims whose identities had been unknown.

"Most were civilians, but there were approximately 300 rebel fighters among them," he said.

While Syria's conflict began with anti-Assad demonstrations, a violent crackdown by the government morphed it into a war that has drawn in international powers and seen the rise of jihadist groups.</s>The UN rights chief warned Tuesday that a "tidal wave of bloodshed" over more than six years of war in Syria had effectively turned the country into a "torture chamber".

"As the conflict enters its seventh year, this is the worst man-made disaster the world has seen since World War II," said Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

More than 320,000 people have been killed and millions forced to flee their homes since the conflict erupted in March 2011, as protests against President Bashar al-Assad morphed into war following a government crackdown.

In an address to the UN Human Rights Council, Zeid said that his office had been refused access to the country and that no international human rights observers had been admitted to places where "very probably tens of thousands of people are currently held. They are places of torture."

"Indeed, the entire conflict, this immense tidal wave of bloodshed and atrocity, began with torture," he said, citing as an example the torture of a group of children by security officials over anti-government graffiti six years ago.

"Today, in a sense, the entire country has become a torture chamber, a place of savage horror and absolute injustice," he said.

The UN and other organisations have repeatedly accused the Syrian authorities of widespread torture.

Amnesty International said in a report last August that an estimated 17,700 people had died from torture in custody since the beginning of the conflict, while the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights put the number at at least 60,000.

Many others have been executed, and far more have simply disappeared, according to the reports.

"We're speaking of a daily continuous massacre that has been going on for six years," Mazen Darwish, a Syrian lawyer who was detained for more than three years, told the UN rights council.

"While we are here today, there are civilians, women, children, innocent people who are being killed under torture," said Darwish, one of several Syrian victims and activists who spoke to the council during a special session on Syria.

Zeid criticised international leaders for failing to act decisively to ensure accountability for the abuses.

"Vetoes have repeatedly pushed back hope for an end to this senseless carnage and for referral of alleged international crimes to the International Criminal Court," he said.

He was referring to a blocked UN Security Council, where Russia in particular has vetoed several attempts to bring a case against Syria before the ICC in The Hague.

But Zeid welcomed the UN General Assembly's agreement in December to set up a body to gather evidence on war crimes in Syria, which would build up "the basis for criminal proceedings against individual perpetrators."

"Ensuring accountability, establishing the truth and providing reparations must happen if the Syrian people are ever to find reconciliation and peace," he said.</s>The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the majority of the deaths, 746, were Islamic State fighters and that the actual figure could be much higher. Islamic State has seized tracts of territory in Syria and neighboring Iraq, where it has also been targeted by U.S.-led forces since July.

Eight of the civilians killed were children, the Observatory said. It said 68 members of al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front were also killed in the air strikes, which started early on Sept. 23.

Coalition strikes have hit the Syrian provinces of Aleppo, Deir al-Zor, Hasaka, Raqqa and Idlib, the Observatory said.

The United States has said it takes reports of civilian casualties seriously and says it has a process to investigate each allegation.

Washington justified its action in Syria under Article 51 of the U.N. Charter, which covers an individual or collective right to self-defense against armed attack.

Around 200,000 people have been killed in Syria's conflict, which is now in its fourth year, according to the United Nations.</s>The fighters, who have vowed to "liberate" the area, captured the Quneitra post on the Syrian side from forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad after fierce clashes, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The organisation gathers information from all sides in the Syrian war.

The crossing is monitored by the United Nations, which oversees traffic between the two enemy countries but the distance between the two warring adversaries' posts is some 200 metres.

During the fighting, two Israelis were wounded by stray bullets, a soldier and a civilian, both in the Golan Heights. Israel responded with artillery fire at two Syrian army positions, the Israeli military said. It was the latest spillover of violence from the three-year conflict.

Stephane Dujarric, a U.N. spokesman, said the organisation's peacekeepers could not confirm whether the rebels had seized the crossing, "as fighting is ongoing" at one of its gates.

Dujarric reported "heavy fighting between the Syrian armed forces and armed members of the opposition" in the Quneitra area adding that several mortars struck near U.N. positions near the peacekeepers' base, but that they took shelter apparently avoiding casualties.

He said the commander of peacekeepers there known as the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) was in touch with Syria and the Israeli military urging both to "exercise restraint and prevent an escalation of the situation."

Shelling from the Syrian civil war has occasionally reached into the Israeli-controlled Golan, occasionally causing injuries and damage to soldiers and civilians. Israel has said the firing has sometimes been deliberately aimed at its troops.

Israel captured the western part of the strategic plateau from Syria in a 1967 war and annexed it, a move that is not internationally recognised.

While the Syrian army has a presence on the Golan, some areas are controlled by rebels fighting to topple Assad, including al Qaeda-inspired militants hostile to the Jewish state.

Rebels last year briefly took the Quneitra border crossing with Israel and now control many villages in the area.

In early July, another al Qaeda off-shoot, Islamic State, which controls roughly a third of Syria and is the strongest insurgent group in the war against Assad, swept into Iraq, taking control of swathes of territory.</s>Barrel bomb attacks are strikes in which helicopters drop highly destructive improvised explosives. Western powers have condemned their use as a war crime, but they continue to be used almost every day in Aleppo and other parts of Syria.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Monday afternoon's strikes occurred in the al-Sukkari neighbourhood of Aleppo, Syria's largest city, now divided between government and rebel forces.

At least two children and one woman were among the dead, as were two men from a local governing council, the Observatory said. The toll was expected to rise because there were a number of people seriously wounded in the attack.

Over 160,000 people have been killed in Syria's conflict, which started over three years ago as a peaceful protest movement and became an armed rebellion after a government crackdown.</s>The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the air strikes hit Islamic State positions in the northern outskirts of Raqqa city, a major stronghold of the hardline Islamist militants.

The areas hit by the strikes included the 17th Division, a Syrian army base that Islamic State seized in July, the Observatory said.

The U.S.-led coalition began bombing Islamic State in Syria in September. Syria's nearly four-year-old civil war has continued unabated throughout the country.

The Observatory said 19 people were killed including seven women and two children when Syrian government warplanes struck the town of Jassim in the southern province of Deraa on Sunday.

Dozens of others were wounded and the death toll was expected to rise because a number were in critical condition, the Observatory said.

Fighting also continued in the Kurdish town of Kobani, northwest of Raqqa on the border with Turkey, where Kurdish defenders have been holding off an assault by Islamic State fighters for more than two months.

At least 62 people have been killed in fighting in Kobani, known as Ayn al-Arab in Arabic, since early on Saturday, the Observatory said.</s>U.S.-led forces launched air strikes on Syria on Tuesday, concentrating raids on the north and east to loosen Islamic State's grip on Syria's oil and its presence along the border with Iraq.

At least 162 people joined the radical al Qaeda offshoot in northeast and eastern Aleppo in the week after Obama's speech on Sept. 10, said the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which gathers information on the conflict.

Islamic State has put particular pressure on rival insurgent groups in this part of Aleppo.

An additional 73 men had joined the group on Sept. 23 and 24 in the northeast Aleppo countryside since the start of the strikes, the Observatory said, bringing the total number since Sept. 10 to at least 235.

"This means these people are not scared. Even if there are air strikes, they still join," said Rami Abdelrahman, who runs the Observatory.

He said the pace of recruitment in September was higher than average but below the surge in July, after Islamic State declared a caliphate in the territory it controlled in Syria and Iraq and called on Muslims to join a holy war.

Most of the new men came from al Qaeda's Syrian wing, the Nusra Front, and were mostly Syrian, the Observatory said. The men who joined in the week after Obama's speech included 15 nationalities, it added.

Islamic State recruited at a record pace in July, according to the Observatory, which counted at least 6,300 new members that month, a big expansion from earlier estimates suggesting the group numbered around 15,000. Around 1,000 of the new fighters were foreign, and the rest Syrian.

Before air strikes this week, Islamic State was believed to hold roughly a third of Syria and large areas of Iraq, where U.S.-led forces have also carried out strikes.

In Syria, Islamic State has seized territory from rival Islamist groups in a belt of territory north of Aleppo, threatening rebel supply lines into the city.</s>Unicef has issued a horrific report claiming that an unofficial ‘holocaust’ killing huge numbers of children in Syria has been completely ignored by the West.

According to the report, 2016 saw the Syrian war kill more children than any other year, with 652 dead as a result of the West’s meddling in the country.

255 of the children killed where in or a near a school, according to the report, which is a 20% jump from the number killed during 2015. The UN concludes that 2016 marks the worst year for ‘grave violations’ than any year since the war begun.

The figure includes only formally verified deaths, meaning the number could be far higher.

Unicef believes more than 850 children were recruited to fight in 2016.

The number is double that of 2015, the report states. Those recruited increasingly found themselves on the frontline or, in extreme cases, used as executioners, suicide bombers or prison guards.

“The depth of suffering is unprecedented,” said Geert Cappelaere, Unicef regional director for the Middle East and North Africa speaking from Homs, Syria.

“Millions of children in Syria come under attack on a daily basis, their lives turned upside down.”

Six years ago this week, the first protests against Bashar al-Assad’s rule began in Syria. The protests led to a violent crackdown and then civil war.

On Monday, the UK-based monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said the death toll from the conflict had topped 320,000.

The first protests were held to demand the release of teenage students held, then tortured, for writing anti-government graffiti.

Since then, the toll on children has only increased, aid agencies say.

Mr Cappelaere added: “Each and every child is scarred for life with horrific consequences on their health, well-being, and future.”

Last week, Save the Children warned millions of Syrian children could be living in a state of “toxic stress”, which the charity feared may become irreversible without immediate help.

It also found two-thirds of children had either lost a loved one, had their house bombed or shelled, or been injured as a result of the war.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the total number of people killed and missing in Syria's war is now 465,000.