DHAKA: The United Nations’ human rights office has stopped updating the death toll from Syria’s civil war, confirming on January 7 that it can no longer verify the sources of information that led to its last count of at least 100,000 in late July 2013.

Rupert Colville, a spokesman for the UN Office of the high commissioner for human rights, blamed the failure to provide new figures on the organisation’s own lack of access on the ground in Syria and its inability to verify ‘source material’ from others.

‘It was always a very difficult figure,’ Colville said in answer to a question by The Associated Press, reports Turkish daily Hurriyet.

‘It was always very close to the edge in terms of how much we could guarantee the source material was accurate. And it reached a point where we felt we could no longer cross that line. So for the time being, we’re not updating those figures.’

BDST: 2123 HRS, JAN 07, 2014
Edited by Robab Rosan, Current Affairs Editor