Syria Civil War: UN Says Death Toll Rises to 'More Than 191,000'

Members of the Civil Defence rescue children after what activists said was an air strike by forces loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad in al-Shaar neighbourhood of Aleppo(Reuters)

More than 191,000 people have been killed in the four-year Syrian civil war so far, the UN human rights chief has said.

Navi Pillay, the UN high commissioner for human rights, claimed that the figure she offered, based on figures from April, was "probably an underestimate" and condemned "international paralysis" on the issue.

"As the report explains, tragically it is probably an underestimate of the real total number of people killed during the first three years of this murderous conflict," she said.

"I deeply regret that, given the onset of so many other armed conflicts in this period of global destabilisation, the fighting in Syria and its dreadful impact on millions of civilians has dropped off the international radar," she said.

"The killers, destroyers and torturers in Syria have been empowered and emboldened by the international paralysis."

Of the victims, 85% were men while women counted for around 9%. The gender of the rest of the victims was unknown.

The death toll is the first issued by the UN human rights office since July 2013, when it estimated that 100,000 had been killed.

The steep rise in deaths is attributed to the increasing brutality in the civil war, with reports of chemical weapon attacks and a number of airstrikes.

Out of the chaos has emerged a multilayered conflict which has seen Isis (now known as the Islamic State) battle rebel Sunni Muslim forces fighting the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

In January, Pillay's office stopped updating the Syrian death toll due to a lack of access to the worst-hit areas and an inability to verify a variety of sources on the ground.

The United Nations also said that it would refuse to endorse other death tolls from organisations such as the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which says that the death toll has surpassed 180,000 since March 2011.

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Egypt: Summer of Discontent as Blackouts Frustrate Public

Electricity shortages have reduced some Egyptians to working by candlelight(Reuters)

Egypt's energy crisis has reached a new low as some parts of the country struggles to cope with as many as six power blackouts per day.

With electricity consumption reaching record highs, the country's existing infrastructure is unable to cope.

The summer months are usually marked by a surge in demand for energy as air conditioning units and fans are switched on at all times in a bid to cool the stifling heat.

The country's electricity minister Mohamed Shaker told reporters that consumption had reached 27,700 megawatts, above the production capacity of 22,000 mW. The 20% shortfall has sparked the frequent power cuts that have plunged homes and businesses into darkness for hours at a time.

While the government has blamed this year's record power cuts on alleged terrorist attacks on the country's energy infrastructure, the shortages are not a new phenomenon.

Indeed, for the past few years, blackouts have become an increasingly common part of daily life.

Egypt has suffered from a lack of supply since former president Hosni Mubarak was ousted in 2011, as the country lurched from economic to political to social crises.

Last summer, the country's first elected president Mohamed Morsi was ousted in a coup after weeks of popular protests over the constant disruption to energy supplies.

Moreover, the government owes billions of dollars to international oil and gas companies. These firms have shown a reluctance to invest further capital in the country without seeing satisfactory returns on their investment and repayment of loans.

While the government has assured the private companies they will get the money they are owed, those firms have yet to show long-term faith in Cairo's current government.

World Health Organization: Why the Ebola Outbreak has been Underestimated

A West Point slum resident looks through closed gates on the second day of quarantine in Monrovia(John Moore/Getty Images)

The magnitude of the Ebola outbreak, especially in Liberia and Sierra Leone, has been underestimated for a number of reasons, according to the World Health Organization.

Many families hide infected loved ones in their homes and as Ebola has no cure, some believe loved ones with the virus will be more comfortable dying at home.

Others deny that a patient has Ebola and believe that care in an isolation ward – viewed as an incubator of the disease – will lead to infection and certain death. Most fear the stigma and social rejection that come to patients and families when a diagnosis of Ebola is confirmed.

"It's a brand new disease in the area and you can understand why people have pre-existing ideas and fears about it, as not enough is known about Ebola," Sandra Smiley, from the charity Doctors Without Borders, told IBTimes UK.

"People are dying at home and buried by their families – which is how the disease spreads," she added. "We need to provide information about hygiene and safe funeral practices."

Outbreaks like this are fast-moving, creating challenges for the many international partners providing support. Quantities of staff, supplies, and equipment, including personal protective equipment, cannot keep up with the need.

Many treatment centres and general clinics have closed, and fear keeps patients out and causes medical staff to flee.

"Health care workers dying has caused people to be fearful, though many of those workers died in situations where the appropriate precautions weren't taken," Smiley added.

Health care posts had to shut because people are scared to go to work. That's really troubling, because of a lack of skilled health care workers in the first place."

In rural villages, corpses are buried without notifying health officials and with no investigation of the cause of death. In some instances, epidemiologists have counted the number of fresh graves as a crude indicator of suspected cases.

In parts of Liberia, a phenomenon is occurring that has never before been seen in an Ebola outbreak. As soon as a new treatment facility is opened, it is immediately filled with patients, many of whom were not previously identified - suggesting the existence of an invisible caseload of patients.

For example in Monrovia, Liberia's capital, an Ebola treatment centre with 20 beds, which opened last week, was immediately overwhelmed with more than 70 patients.

An additional problem is the existence of numerous "shadow-zones" - villages with rumours of cases and deaths that cannot be investigated because of community resistance or lack of adequate staff and vehicles.

In some areas, most notably Monrovia, virtually all health services have shut down. This lack of access to any form of health care contributed to the mobbing incident on Saturday at an Ebola holding facility in the West Point township, Liberia's most disease-prone slum.

Rumours spread that the holding facility, hastily set up by local authorities in an abandoned schoolhouse, was actually a clinic for general health care. People from other communities brought their ailing family members there, where they were housed together with suspected Ebola patients.

WHO epidemiologists in Sierra Leone and Liberia are working with other agencies, including Doctors without Borders and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to produce more realistic estimates and communicate the true magnitude of needs.

Pictures of the Week: Best Photos of Past Seven Days

A man is doused with milk and sprayed with mist after tear gas was fired by security forces trying to disperse demonstrators protesting against the shooting of unarmed black teen Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri(Adrees Latif/Reuters)

Protesters gesture in front of clouds of tear gas(Lucas Jackson / Reuters)

A demonstrator wearing a stars and stripes vest takes part in a protest in Ferguson, Missouri(Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Demonstrators protesting against the shooting of Michael Brown hold signs in Ferguson, Missouri(Getty)

Ten-year-old Saah Exco lies in a back alley of the West Point slum in Monrovia, Liberia. The boy was one of the patients pulled out of a holding centre for suspected Ebola patients when the facility was overrun by a mob on Saturday. A local clinic Tuesday refused to treat the boy, according to residents, because of the danger of infection.(John Moore/Getty Images)

Suspected Ebola sufferer Finda 'Zanabo' prays over her sick family members before being admitted to the Doctors Without Borders (MSF), Ebola treatment centre. She and her family left an Ebola isolation centre in the West Point slum when it was overrun by a mob on August 16. Her nephew Saah Exco, 10, died on Wednesday, after being taken to the JFK Ebola ward in Monrovia.(John Moore/Getty Images)

Umu Fambulle stands over her husband Ibrahim after he staggered and fell, knocking himself unconscious in an Ebola isolation centre in a closed primary school in Monrovia(John Moore/Getty Images)

Mahmoud Mansour and his bride Maral Malka celebrate before their wedding in Jaffa, south of Tel Aviv. More than 200 far-right Israeli protesters tried to disrupt the wedding of a Jewish woman and a Muslim man.(Reuters)

Tarek al-Rifi, the father of one of the three children from the Al-Rifi family killed in an Israeli military strike, reacts at Gaza city's Al-Shifa hospital(AFP)

A Palestinian fighter from the Izz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Hamas movement, stands inside a tunnel. A rare tour that Hamas granted to a Reuters reporter, photographer and cameraman appeared to be an attempt to dispute Israel's claim that it had demolished all of the Islamist group's border infiltration tunnels.(Reuters)

A journalist tours a tunnel that was dug underneath a neighbourhood close to the residential compound of Yemen's former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, in Sanaa(Reuters)

A man takes a selfie as he stands with a Ukrainian flag on a Soviet-style star retouched with blue paint so it resembles the yellow-and-blue national colours of Ukraine, atop the spire of a building in Moscow(Reuters)

Japanese soldiers dig for bodies buried in the mud after a landslide swept through a residential area in Hiroshima(Reuters)

A worker is reflected in spilled oil as he tries to clean up the shores of the river San Juan in Cadereyta, Mexico. The 24-inch Madero-Cadereyta pipeline, owned by national oil company Pemex, was ruptured when thieves attempted to tap into it(Reuters)

Revellers taunt a bull with its horns set on fire during the El Novillo de Bombas festival in Mira, north of Quito, Ecuador(Reuters)

A coconut is soaked in paraffin and set on fire for a game of 'fire football' during celebrations of Indonesia's Independence Day in Yogyakarta(Getty)

Tracer bullets ricochet off their targets as Japanese Ground Self-Defence Force tanks fire their machine guns during a night session of an annual training exercise at Higashifuji training field near Mount Fuji in Gotemba, west of Tokyo(Reuters)

Reid Wiseman, an astronaut on the International Space Station, took this photo of an aurora dancing around the Earth's atmosphere. 'Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine this,' he tweeted.@astro_reid

Cleaners abseil down one of the faces of Big Ben, to clean and polish the clock face. A week has been set aside for the cleaning of what is officially known as the Great Clock, which is set in the Elizabeth Tower above the Houses of Parliament in London.(Reuters)

A couple chat and drink beer during sunset in Brasilia, Brazil(Reuters)

Lucia Carbines performs during the Empire circus show presented by Spiegelworld in Tokyo(AFP)

French artist Agathe de Bailliencourt creates an installation using glowing pebbles at the Singapore Night Festival(AFP)

People look at French artist Clement Briend's photographic light installation Divine Trees, which features images of figures highly revered in Asian cultures projected onto trees at the Singapore Night Festival(Reuters)

People try to climb greased poles to reach prizes during an event organised in celebration of Indonesia's 69th Independence Day in Jakarta(Reuters)

Indian Hindu devotees reach out before attempting to form a human pyramid in a bid to reach and break a dahi-handi (curd pot) suspended over the crowd during celebrations for the Janmashtami festival, marking the birth of Lord Krishna, in Mumbai(AFP)

Devotees try to form a human pyramid to break a clay pot containing curd during the Hindu festival of Janmashtami in Mumbai(Reuters)

Acrobats from a Shaolin martial arts school perform a dazzling aerial display during the opening ceremony of the Youth Olympic Games in Nanjing, China(Getty)

People dressed up as leopards and tigers take part in a traditional parade to ask for rain and plenty of crops, in Chilapa, Guerrero State, Mexico(AFP)

An eight-week old Javan leopard cub is weighed at the Tierpark zoo in Berlin(AFP)

A squirrel monkey peers into a photographer's lens during the annual weigh-in at London Zoo(Reuters)

A family of swans swim along a channel in a field in Popielarze, Poland(AFP)

A female dog feeds two tiger cubs and her own puppy after the cubs' mother rejected them at a zoo in Hefei, Anhui province, China(Reuters)

Newborn giant panda triplets are cared for in an incubator at the Chimelong Safari Park in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, China(Reuters)

Police Monitoring Irish Jihadi Fighters Travelling from Emerald Isle to Isis Caliphate

Militant Islamist fighters parade on military vehicles along the streets of northern Raqqa province.(Reuters)

Thirty Irish jihadi fighters are using the country as a base to travel to Isis-held territory in Iraq and Syria, according to Irish intelligence.

Three of those under surveillance by the Irish 'Garda' are believed to have been killed in the Middle East fighting for Isis (now known as the Islamic State), one who was a 16-year-old boy.

As well as the Gardai's scrutiny, the rest of the Irish jihadis are being closely watched by international intelligence agencies.

It is believed that approximately 2,000 citizens of the European Union have made the journey to the Middle East to fight for the Islamist terror organisation.

Ireland's Muslim community stands at 50,000 but it is thought that less than 100 sympathise with IS.

One is said to be a "half-Nigerian, half-Irish" sympathiser, who posts social media messages which give advice to potential jihadists.

He reveals how to travel to Syria without being caught by intelligence services and, on message boards, he promises free weapons, food, accommodation and electricity upon arrival.

The previous US Ambassador to Ireland, Dan Rooney, had criticised Irish cuts to government initiatives that helped to integrate Muslim immigrants into Irish society as he said this may lead to their radicalisation.

The revelation of the Irish surveillance operation comes as the Islamist group continues to grab the international spotlight following the gruesome beheading of American journalist James Foley.

Despite the terror group's threat to kill Steven Sotloff, a second kidnapped American journalist, in retaliation for further strikes, American fighter jets and drones have continued their airstrike campaign on IS positions in northern Iraq.

The airstrikes have allowed Kurdish Peshmerga forces and Iraqi troops to recapture towns in northern Iraq and Mosul Dam, a strategically important piece of infrastructure as it controls the water and power supply to the surrounding region.

South Africa: Man Killed With Oranges in Fight on Farm

Man pelted to death with oranges during row on farm in Limpopo, South Africa(Getty)

A man has been killed by a bombardment of oranges thrown at him during an argument on a farm.

Two men have been arrested over the death of a farmworker in a rural part of South Africa.

According to witnesses, the victim and the suspected attackers had a row and they began pelting him with loose fruit.

Police investigating the incident said the man had no obvious injuries, raising the possibility he was killed by a blunt force trauma.

Police lieutenant Colonel Moatshe Ngoepe called it a "complicated" case. "They started pelting the deceased with all those loose oranges, killing him on the spot.

"The paramedics found that the man was dead when they arrived on the scene. He had been hit very badly by oranges," he said.

Two men aged 27 and 30 are being held by police over the incident, which happened on a farm near the town of Tzaneen in Limpopo province.

Ebola in Liberia Photos: West Point Slum Sealed to Prevent Spread of Disease

Tens of thousands of people have been barricaded in an impoverished slum in Liberia's capital to try to contain the spread of Ebola. Residents of West Point lined up to receive rice, cooking oil and drinking water after authorities put up barbed wire barricades.

West Point is a densely populated slum surrounded by floating sewage that occupies a half-mile long peninsula in Liberia's seaside capital.

These pictures by Getty Images photographer John Moore show the plight of those trapped in the slum.

A West Point slum resident looks through the bars on the closed gates on the second day of quarantine(John Moore/Getty Images)

West Point residents look out of the locked gate on the second day of the Liberian government's Ebola quarantine on their neighbourhood(John Moore/Getty Images)

Residents of West Point receive rice, beans and cooking oil. They are forbidden from leaving the seaside slum, due to the Ebola outbreak in their community.(John Moore/Getty Images)

Scuffles break out as quarantined residents of the West Point slum wait for food aid(John Moore/Getty Images)

Armed Liberian police officers look towards West Point on the second day of the Ebola quarantine on the seaside slum(John Moore/Getty Images)

Liberia is being hit especially hard by the dreaded virus, accounting for 576 of the 1,350 people that have been killed by Ebola in West Africa.

Some 2,473 people are believed to have contracted the disease, in four countries, making the current outbreak is bigger than the combined caseloads all previous Ebola outbreaks.

Suspected Ebola sufferer Finda 'Zanabo' prays over her sick family members before being admitted to the Doctors Without Borders (MSF), Ebola treatment centre. She and her family left an Ebola isolation centre in the West Point slum when it was overrun by a mob on 16 August. Her nephew Saah Exco, 10, died on Wednesday, after being taken to the JFK Ebola ward in Monrovia.(John Moore/Getty Images)

People with suspected Ebola lie on the ground outside the Doctors Without Borders Ebola treatment centre after arriving by ambulance(John Moore/Getty Images)

A man lies under a car after being put there in detention by the Liberian army on the second day of the government's Ebola quarantine on West Point slum in Monrovia. An army officer said the man was showing symptoms of Ebola and was caught trying to escape from West Point.(John Moore/Getty Images)

Ebola is transmitted by direct contact with the bodily fluids of someone who is sick and showing symptoms. To stop its spread, experts say, the sick should be isolated and not have any contact with the healthy. Overcrowded treatment centres, reluctance on the part of sick people to seek medical care, and burial practices that involve touching the dead have helped fuel the disease's spread.

An MSF staff member wearing protective clothing stands in the high risk area of the Ebola treatment centre(John Moore/Getty Images)

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) staff suit up in protective clothing before entering a high-risk area of the MSF Ebola treatment centre(John Moore/Getty Images)

A member of staff checks his protective clothing before entering a high-risk area of the MSF Ebola treatment centre(John Moore/Getty Images)

Several counties and districts in Sierra Leone and Liberia have been cordoned off, and there are concerns this is slowing the supply of food and other goods to these areas. The World Food Programme is preparing to feed one million people affected by such travel restrictions.

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