U.N. Says Death Toll in Syria Exceeds 5,000

The U.N. human rights chief  Navi Pillay reported that more that 5,000 people are believed to have been killed in Syria, 1,100 higher than what Pillay announced just 10 days earlier. ”It is rather shocking that when I reported to the Security Council on the 18th of August, I reported 2,000 civilians killed, and today I reported that the figure exceeds 5,000,” she said. Syria’s ambassador to the U.N. Bashar Jaafari rejected the estimate, saying it was unbelievable and “incredible.” Jaafari stated that Pillay should have never been brought before a closed session with the security council and that it was a  ”huge conspiracy concocted against Syria since the beginning,” and told reporters that she “trespassed her mandate, she allowed herself to be misused in misleading the public opinion.”

In the closed session, Pillay noted “it is based on the evidence and the widespread and systematic nature of the killings, the detentions and the acts of torture that I felt that these acts constituted crimes against humanity and I recommended that there should be a referral to the International Criminal Court.” Fatou Bensouda, the new chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court said the court cannot act without a U.N. referral from the Security Council, and stated “Syria is unlikely to make a declaration accepting the ICC’s jurisdiction.”

However, Ian Black of The Guardian wrote that President Bashar al-Assad is safe for now from prosecution while he has the support of Russia and China. Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has been highly critical of the West and its condemnation of the Syrian government, and accused the West of an “immoral” stance on Syria. This comes as fresh clashes erupted in Syria, with activists reporting that “Syrian security forces and anti-government military defectors launched attacks that left 26 people dead in a restive northwestern border region.”