U.N. gives up on counting death toll in Syria

The U.N.’s human rights office has decided to stop updating its death count in Syria, because it says it can no longer give an accurate report.

Rupert Colville, a spokesman for the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, confirmed Tuesday that it can no longer verify the “source material” that led to its last count of at least 100,000 in late July, the Associated Press reported.

“It was always a very difficult figure,” Mr. Colville said. “It was always very close to the edge in terms of how much we could guarantee the source material was accurate. And it reached a point where we felt we could no longer cross that line. So for the time being, we’re not updating those figures.”

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights last counted 130,000 killed in the war-torn country since March 2011, but the U.N. could not endorse that count, the AP reported.