At least 12 refugees fleeing the war in Syria, including two young boys, drowned on Wednesday while trying to reach the Greek island of Kos from the Turkish resort town of Bodrum, according to Turkey’s state-owned Anadolu news agency.
A sense of weary resignation at the plight of the Syrians — and hundreds of thousands of other refugees and migrants taking desperate risks to reach the safety of Europe — was briefly punctured by horrifying images of one of the young victims, a small boy whose body was discovered, face down in the sand, by a Turkish police officer.
An estimated 2,500 refugees have died or disappeared this year in the sea trying to reach Europe, a spokeswoman for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner .
After 51 months of fighting, the death toll is more than 230,000 Syrians, including some 14,000 children.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) recently announced that the death toll from Syria’s conflict now exceeds 230,000 people. In May 2014, SOHR had put the death toll at 160,000 people, indicating more than 70,000 people killed in Syria over the past year alone.
The report was confined to counting individuals who had been identified by name, along with the date and location of their death, using data from five organizations that was screened to avoid duplication. It did not include nearly 52,000 deaths that were recorded but lacked sufficient detail.
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