UN: Syria, under a civil war

Syria has been entered in a State of civil war, with more than 4,000 dead and a growing number of soldiers to defect to take up arms against the regime of Bashar Assad, said the main official of human rights in the UN yesterday Thursday.

Assad has tried to crush the uprising against his autocratic rule, which has already been eight months, but the violence intensifies.

. The High Commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay, said that the United Nations estimated the death toll "at 4,000, but the information that reaches us indicates that it is much higher than".

"Barely there began to be more and more defectors threatening to take up arms, what I said in August the Security Council, there a civil war," Pillay told the press in Geneva. "And I am thus characterizing now".

issued harsh criticism at a time when President Bashar Assad faces increasingly more internal pressure and abroad. u000aBut has not given evidence of flexibility in its position.

"We are placing the figure at 4,000, but really the information that is coming to us is that it is much higher," he told journalists in Pillay Geneva.

For its part, the European Union imposed new sanctions yesterday in Damascus, and the Syrian opposition called a general strike in an increase in efforts to convince employers to abandon its ties with the regime.

A series of economic sanctions by the Arab League, Turkey and the EU are causing havoc on the ailing economy of Syria, a dangerous situation for the Government in Damascus.

Long, since Syrian businessmen have traded political freedoms for economic privileges in the country, where the prosperous mercantile classes are crucial to prop up the regime. But sanctions, could weaken its determination.

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