Death exceeds 93,000; FSA stages operations against regime

Soldiers drive a tank in the town of Qusayr, in Syria's central Homs province Britain and its allies must be "prepared to do more" to save innocent lives in Syria, British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Wednesday, after talks with his US counterpart John Kerry. A report published by the United Nations human rights office on Thursday states that more than 93,000 people, including at least 6,500 children, have perished in Syria's brutal civil war.
"Unfortunately, as the study indicates, this is most likely a minimum casualty figure. The true number of those killed is potentially much higher," UN rights chief Navi Pillay said in a statement.
Speaking at a joined press conference, Hague said: "The United Kingdom believes that the situation demands a strong, coordinated, and determined approach by the UK, US, and our allies in Europe and the region."
Calling the conflict in Syria "the most urgent crisis anywhere in the world today," Hague warned the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, stating: "Assad seems to be preparing new assaults, endangering the lives and safety of hundreds of Syrians who are already in desperate need."
"The scale of the regime's repression and the human suffering that it has caused beggars belief - a campaign of murder and tyranny that they have waged for more than 800 days now. It is not only a moral outrage - it's a grave threat to the wider region," the British minister said.
He confirmed that he had discussed the Syrian conflict, now in its third year, with Kerry in their talks, saying the "innocent victims of war and repression" had been "at the forefront of our minds."
But both men said they had no decisions to announce amid a growing clamour for Western nations to start arming the opposition rebels to help them fight off growing gains by Assad's regime backed by thousands of Hezbollah militants.
Kerry insisted the goal of diplomatic efforts was to reach a political solution and transition of power that "gives  Syrian people the chance to have a new beginning where they choose their future leadership."
"We have said that we will do everything we can, that we are able to do, to help the opposition achieve that goal and to reach a point where that can be implemented, and that's what we trying to do," Kerry said.
He said the US administration was meeting "to talk about various balances in this issue right now."
Assad's choice of weapons "challenges anybody's standards of human behaviour and we're going to have to make judgments ourselves about how we're going to be able to help the opposition deal with that," Kerry added, stressing, "Nobody is winning in Syria the way things are going."
Hague agreed that the focus of their efforts was a political solution. "We will have to be prepared to do more to save lives, to pressure the Assad regime to negotiate seriously and to prevent the growth of extremism and terrorism if diplomatic efforts are going to succeed," he warned.
The Syria Local Coordination Committee (LCC) stated that 25 soldiers from the Syrian regime were killed in an operation staged in Deir Ezzor by the Free Syrian Army (FSA).
Free Syrian army forces staged an operation at a building in Al Rashid in Deir Ezzor where 25 soldiers of the Syrian regime died and several others were wounded.
Hezbollah militia and Free Syrian army forces clashed in suburbs surrounding Damascus, LCC added.
Meanwhile, British based organisation, Syrian Observatory for Human Rights announced that preliminary death toll for Wednesday is about 70.
The dead, the group stated, included 21 civilians, 18 rebels, four unidentified rebels, 20 regular soldiers.
There are reports that several civilians were killed by the bombardment on the village of Eqeirebat in Reef Hama, and in the Qaboun neighbourhood of Damascus.
 Reports add that 10 unidentified bodies were found in the Qadam neighbourhood, which activists say were summarily executed by regime forces.