Observatory: Over 32,000 Killed in Syria Conflict

Violence across Syria has killed more than 32,000 people, most of them civilians, since the outbreak of an anti-regime revolt in March last year, a monitoring group said.

Some 1,000 people have been killed in the past week alone, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, as violence escalates across the country.

"At least 22,980 civilians, 7,884 soldiers and 1,215 defectors have been killed in violence in Syria," Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told Agence France Presse, adding the latest figures excluded Monday's preliminary toll of 141.

September saw at least 4,727 people killed, including 305 on the 26th -- the bloodiest single day since the conflict began, said the Observatory. The highest monthly toll came in August, when the watchdog recorded 5,440 deaths.

The Observatory's civilian toll includes non-military defectors who have taken up arms against the regime of President Bashar Assad.

But the tallies do not count the many unidentified victims of the bloody conflict, nor do they account for thousands of people missing and thought to be in detention.

They also exclude thousands of pro-regime militiamen, Abdel Rahman said.

The Britain-based Observatory relies on a network of activists, lawyers and medics in Syria for its information.

The revolt began as pro-reform protests but morphed into an armed insurgency when demonstrations were brutally crushed. Most rebels, like the population, are Sunni in a country dominated by a minority Alawite regime. Alawites are an offshoot of Shiite Islam.