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The ugliness and brutality in Syria

Weep as you read what is happening in Syria - whilst the world tries to work out who ought to sit at a conference table (the US doesn't want Iran!) before anyone even steps in to try and stop the carnage underway in Syria.     The world stands condemned for standing idly by as Syria is torn apart and its people suffer - either in the country itself or outside it as refugees.

"The civil war in Syria has been unusually deadly for children, a likely result of government forces shelling civilian neighborhoods, and a campaign of government kidnappings has “disappeared” an unknown number of civilians, according to two fresh reports about the brutal battle for control of the country.

In the first report, the Oxford Research Group put the number of dead children in the Syrian conflict at 11,420, or about 10 percent of the known death toll. The vast majority of the children age 17 or younger were killed by government artillery shells and rockets striking residential neighborhoods. But at least 112 children were tortured and killed, the group said. From its report:

The analyses laid out in this report show that the most commonly identified cause of death of children was the use of explosive weapons, which killed 71percent of the 10,586 children for whom a cause of death was recorded—children killed by bombs and shells in their homes, in their communities, and in day-to-day activities such as waiting in bread lines or attending school. The second most frequent cause of death was small-arms fire, which killed 26.5%—children caught in crossfire, targeted by snipers or summarily executed. Other documented causes of death presented in this report show children killed in detention, by torture, and by chemical weapons."





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