BEIRUT: Rights activists report on Sunday that 50,009 people have been killed in Syria since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began in March 2011.

The United Nations estimates that upwards of 60,000 have been killed.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights toll includes 34,942 civilians, nearly 8,000 of whom took up arms to join the rebels.

Another 1,619 were defected soldiers, while 12,283 were loyalist troops, said the Britain-based activist, which gathers information from a wide network of activists, layers and medics in civilian and military hospitals across Syria.

A total of 1,165 fatalities were unidentified.

Among the civilian casualties, 3,679 were children under 18 and 2,120 were women, it said.

"These figures do not include missing prisoners, estimated to number in the thousands; shabiha (regime militiamen); hundreds of foreign fighters whose deaths are announced in their own countries; or regime informants, estimated to number in the hundreds," Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.