AT LEAST 2,600 people have been killed in Syria since unrest broke out earlier this year, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights confirmed today.

Speaking at the Human Rights Council in Geneva, Navi Pillay said, “According to reliable sources on the ground, the number of those killed since the onset of the unrest in mid-March 2011 in that country, has now reached at least 2,600.”

She was reiterating a call for accountability for gross violations of human rights in Syria, Libya and the Ivory Coast.

Among the 2,600 dead in Syria is activist Ghiyath Mattar, who was killed while in the custody of Syrian security forces last week.

The US State Department condemned the killing in a statement yesterday. Spokesperson Victoria Nuland said:

Ghiyath Mattar’s courage in the face of the Asad regime’s brutal repression is well known in his home of Daraya and across Syria. His brave commitment to confronting the regime’s despicable violence with peaceful protest serves as an example for the Syrian people and for all those who suffer under the yoke of oppression.

The Syrian regime refuted the death toll with a spokesman for President Bashar Assad claiming that 1,400 people have died. The Government’s figures include 700 army and police officers and 700 so-called insurgents.

Promised reforms

Meanwhile, CNN is reporting that an adviser to Assad has told Russian media that parliamentary elections will be held either at the end of this year or the start of 2012.

The Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said today that Moscow saw no need for “additional pressure” to be put on Assad, according to Al Jazeera.

SANA, the State-controlled news agency of Syria, is reporting today that “national dialogue sessions” are continuing between people from “all spectrums of society” in certain provinces and the country’s universities.

The Government has also denied that military airplanes have been deployed in Homs. Governor Ghassan Abdul Aal said the claims were just “baseless broadcasts by malicious media channels”.

In a separate report, the news agency details the deaths of six army officers who were killed by what the Government claim are “armed terrorist groups” in the central city.

Assad has stuck to the line that his army are defending the country against armed terrorist groups.