BEIRUT: More than 100,000 people have been killed since the start of Syria’s conflict over two years ago, an activist group said Wednesday.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has been tracking the death toll in the conflict through a network of activists in Syria, released its death toll at a time when hopes for a negotiated settlement to end the civil war fade.

It said it had tallied a total of 100,191 deaths over the 27 months of the conflict, but Observatory chief Rami Abdul-Rahman said he expected the real number was higher as neither side was totally forthcoming about its losses.

Of the dead, 36,661 are civilians, the group said.

On the government side, 25,407 are members of President Bashar Assad’s armed forces, 17,311 are pro-government fighters and 169 are militants from Lebanon’s Hezbollah, who have fought alongside army troops.

Deaths among Assad’s opponents included 13,539 rebels, 2,015 army defectors and 2,518 foreign fighters battling against the regime.

Entry of the foreign media into Syria is severely restricted and few reports from the fighting can be independently verified.

Earlier this month, the U.N. put the number of those killed in the conflict at 93,000 between March 2011 when the crisis started and end of April this year.

The government has not released death tolls. The state media published the names of the government’s dead in the first months of the crisis, but then stopped publishing its losses after the opposition became an armed insurgency.

Abdul-Rahman said that the group’s tally of army casualties is based on information from military medical sources, records obtained by the group from state agencies and activists’ own count of military funerals in government areas of the country. Another source for regime fatalities are activist videos showing dead soldiers killed in rebel-held areas who are later identified.

Abdul-Rahman believes the number of combatants killed on both sides is probably much higher as neither the government nor the rebels are fully transparent about battlefield casualties.

Syria’s conflict began as peaceful protests against Assad’s rule. It gradually became an armed conflict after the Assad’s regime used the army to crackdown on dissent and some opposition supporters took up weapons to fight government troops.

Even the most modest international efforts to end the Syrian conflict have failed. U.N.’s special envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, told reporters on Tuesday that an international peace conference proposed by Russia and the U.S. will not take place until later in the summer, partly because of opposition disarray.

The fighting has increasingly been taking sectarian overtones. Sunni Muslims dominate the rebel ranks while Assad’s regime is dominated by Alawites, an offshoot sect of Shiite Islam.

It has also spilled over Syria’s borders, especially into Lebanon, where factions supporting opposing sides have clashed in the northern city of Tripoli and in the eastern Bekaa valley. Lebanese are divided over Syria’s civil war with some supporting President Bashar Assad’s regime and others backing the opposition. More than 550,000 Syrians have fled to neighboring Lebanon as a result of the war.

Earlier this week, sectarian tensions drew Lebanon’s weak army into fighting. Eighteen soldiers were killed in a two-day battle between the army and supporters of a radical Sunni sheik in the southern city of Sidon. The army had earlier reported 17 deaths and said Wednesday that another soldier died of his wounds in a hospital.

The conflict reached the capital Beirut on Wednesday when masked men ambushed a bus and attacked the approximately 30 people aboard with knives, a Lebanese official said. He said 10 people were wounded in the attack in the eastern part of the city, including five Syrians, two Palestinians and three Lebanese, the officials said. He spoke anonymously in line with regulations.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said the bus was carrying Syrians headed to a TV studio in the eastern Sunday Market district to take part in a cultural program. It said there were eight attackers, who fled the area.

The conflict has also polarized the region. Several Gulf states including Sunni-majority Saudi Arabia, Washington’s key ally and a foe of Iran, back the rebels. Tehran, a Shiite powerhouse, supports Assad.

A Syrian activist group, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, reported large explosions in the area of the Jamraya research center early Sunday.

If confirmed, Sunday’s strike would mark the third Israeli attack inside Syria this year. Israel has said it will not allow sophisticated weapons to flow from Syria to the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, an ally of the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Israeli officials were not immediately available for comment early Sunday.

On Saturday, Israeli officials confirmed that a day earlier Israeli aircraft targeted a weapons shipment apparently bound for Hezbollah.

BEIRUT: Syrian President Bashar Assad and his allies are showing renewed confidence that the momentum in the civil war is shifting in their favor, due in part to the rapid rise of al-Qaida-linked extremists among the rebels and the world’s reluctance to take forceful action to intervene in the fighting.

His invigorated regime has gone on the offensive — both on the ground and in its portrayal of the conflict as a choice between Assad and the extremists.

Several factors appear to have convinced Assad he can weather the storm: Two years into the uprising against his family’s iron rule, his regime remains firmly entrenched in Damascus, the defection rate from the military has dwindled, and key international supporters Russia and China are still solidly on his side.

Moreover, the regime has benefited from the fallout created by audio distributed last month in which the head of the extremist Jabhat al-Nusra group, one of the most powerful and effective rebel groups inSyria, pledged allegiance to al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.

There are signs of Assad’s renewed confidence.

After dropping largely out of sight following an hour-long speech at the Opera House in central Damascus in January, Assad has appeared in two TV interviews in the past month. His wife, Asma, appeared in public in March for the first time in months, surrounded by women and children for a function honoring mothers.

“I can say, without exaggeration, that the situation in Syria now is better than it was at the beginning of the crisis,” Assad said in an interview with state-run broadcaster Al-Ikhbariya on April l7.

“With time, people became more aware of the dangers of what was happening. … They started to gain a better understanding of the real Syria we used to live in and realized the value of the safety, security and harmony, which we used to enjoy,” he added.

On Wednesday, a smiling Assad made another rare public appearance, visiting a Damascus power station just a day after a bombing in the capital and two days after his prime minister escapade an assassination attempt.

Syrian TV showed Assad, looking confident and wearing a dark business suit, chatting with workers and shaking their hands on May Day.

“They want to scare us, we will not be scared. … They want us to live underground, we will not live underground,” Assad was shown telling a group of workers gathered around him in a garden.

Since the beginning of the uprising in March 2011, Assad’s regime has tried to portray the movement as being driven by what it called terrorists and foreign-backed mercenaries. The government responded with a brutal military crackdown that led many to take up arms to fight back. Gradually, the rebellion turned into an armed insurgency, drawing in radicalized elements and foreign fighters from other countries.

Jabhat al-Nusra, designated a terrorist group by the U.S., has emerged as one of the most potent fighting forces.

Assad’s regime has seized on the recording of Nusra Front’s leader pledging allegiance to al-Qaida as proof it is fighting terrorists, prompting some members of the Syrian opposition to claim the audio was faked by the government to tarnish their movement.

“The regime is trying, and succeeding unfortunately, in brainwashing some segments of society into thinking that they are their protectors and whoever follows will massacre them,” said opposition figure Kamal Labwani.

Many Syrians acknowledge feeling more secure under Assad.

A Christian Syrian tailor who fled last month to Lebanon said at least Assad was a known quantity. He said people fled when “heavily armed and bearded gunmen” from an anti-Assad group arrived in his hometown last month, setting up roadblocks and checking people’s IDs. The tailor insisted on identifying himself only as Amin, his first name, for fear of reprisals from the regime or its opponents.

Despite losing large swaths of territory in northern and eastern Syria, Assad’s military has retained his firm grip on Damascus, his seat of power, and key coastal areas. In recent weeks, his troops have made advances, pushing back rebels in parts of the Damascus suburbs and some areas where rebels regularly fire mortars on the capital.

Inspecting the site of a car bombing Tuesday in Damascus, Interior Minister Mohammed al-Shaar told reporters the attacks in the capital were in response to the “victories and achievements scored by the Syrian Arab Army on the ground against terrorism.” Al-Shaar himself escaped a bomb that targeted his convoy in December.

Rami Abdul-Rahman, director of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which closely monitors the civil war, said the number of defections from the military as well as political circles has gone “significantly down” in recent months. Those who are now fighting are considered the “hard-core regime supporters” who will stay until the end, he said.

Syrians opposed to Assad accuse him of encouraging and planting extremists in the ranks of the rebellion, including releasing hundreds of jihadis from prison early in the uprising, knowing full well that they were bound to take up arms against it.

Ammar Abdulhamid, a Washington-based Syrian pro-democracy activist and director of the Tharwa Foundation, said that while the regime has probably lost control over these cells by now, their presence has helped it achieve its goal.

They can now point to these cells and their activities to bolster their message of “either us or the terrorists.”

The Assad dynasty has long tried to push a secular and nationalist identity in Syria while flirting with extremists when it suited it. In 2003, the Syrian regime was known to be providing safe passage to jihadis to enter Iraq to fight U.S. forces.

“This is a game that the Assad regime has perfected by now. They create the problem and then they offer their services to the world to solve that problem,” said Randa Slim, a research fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington.

Still, the extremists’ role in the civil war has raised alarm among Syrians and officials in the West. Their presence has been among the chief reasons behind international reluctance to arm the rebels.

Allegations that the regime used chemical weapons have not triggered an international response, despitePresident Barack Obama’s earlier assertion that use of such weapons would be a “game-changer” and a “red line.”

Obama said Tuesday that the evidence available does not yet merit the quick use of U.S. military power.

Russia and China, Assad’s main allies, have stuck by him during the course of the uprising, as have his supporters in the region — Iran and Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group.

In a further boost, Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah said in a speech Tuesday that Syria’s “real friends,” including his Iranian-backed group, would intervene on the side of Damascus if needed.

Abdulhamid said that if groups like al-Nusra increase their profile in Syria, there will be a greater willingness among some Western leaders to listen to Assad’s argument again.

“The mantra of ‘Either us or the extremists’ is slowly but surely regaining some of its popularity and relevance in decision-making circles in the West,” he said.

AMMAN, Jordan: Syria’s president harshly criticized U.S. and British aid to rebels and set harsh terms for talking to his opponents in a newspaper interview published Sunday, as fighting raged across the country.

On the battlefield, rebels made significant gains in the heavily contested northeastern Syrian, capturing a police academy complex west of Aleppo and storming the central prison in the city of Raqqa, as well as a border crossing along Syria’s frontier with Iraq, activists said.

President Bashar Assad took a tough line against his opponents in the interview with London’s Sunday Times, dialing back earlier hints of flexibility about talks.

He said he is ready for dialogue with armed rebels and militants, but only if they surrender their weapons. Recently his foreign minister offered such talks but left the question of laying down arms unanswered. Assad’s regime often refers to rebels as “terrorists.”

“We are ready to negotiate with anyone, including militants who surrender their arms. We are not going to deal with terrorists who are determined to carry weapons, to terrorize people, to kill civilians, to attack public places or private enterprise and to destroy the country,” Assad said. “We fight terrorism.”

Most opposition groups have rejected talks with Assad’s regime, with some demanding that he resign before talks can begin.

Assad said that he would not step down or go into exile. “No patriotic person will think about living outside his country. I am like any other patriotic Syrian,” he said.

The interview was conducted in Damascus last week and was published Sunday, coinciding with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s first foreign tour.

Kerry met with Syrian rebels in Italy Thursday. He has announced a $60 million package of non-lethal U.S. aid to the rebels.

Assad said the “intelligence, communication and financial assistance being provided is very lethal.”

Assad also bitterly criticized Britain. He said instead of pushing for peace talks, British Prime Minister David Cameron’s “naive, confused, unrealistic” government was trying to end a European Union arms embargo so that the rebels can be supplied with weapons.

“We do not expect an arsonist to be a firefighter,” he said, dismissing any notion that Britain could help end the civil war, which has killed more than 70,000 people.

“How can we ask Britain to play a role while it is determined to militarize the problem? How can we expect them to make the violence less while they want to send military supply to the terrorists?” he asked.

On Thursday, British Foreign Secretary William Hague promised to increase support for the Syrian opposition, including equipment supplies and humanitarian assistance.

Assad said Hague was misguided in his offer of assistance to rebels. “The British government wants to send military aid to moderate groups in Syria, knowing all too well that such moderate groups do not exist in Syria,” he said.

“We all know that we are now fighting al-Qaida, or Jabhat al-Nusra, an offshoot of al-Qaida, and other groups of people indoctrinated with extreme ideologies,” he said.

Assad warned that arming the rebels would have grave consequences.

“Syria lies at the fault line geographically, politically, socially and ideologically. So playing with this fault line will have serious repercussions all over the Middle East,” he said.

He vowed to avenge from Israel for an airstrike on a suspected site — which Syria said was a research center — in Damascus last month.

“Retaliation does not mean missile for missile or bullet for bullet,” he said. “Our own way does not have to be announced.”

BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian rebels scored one of their biggest strategic victories Monday since the country’s crisis began two years ago, capturing the nation’s largest dam and iconic industrial symbol of the Assad family’s four-decade rule.

Rebels led by the al-Qaida-linked militant group Jabhat al-Nusra now control much of the water flow in the country’s north and east, eliciting warnings from experts that any mistake in managing the dam may drown wide areas in Syria and Iraq.

A Syrian government official denied that the rebels captured the dam, saying “heavy clashes are taking place around it.” The official spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations. But amateur video released by activists showed gunmen walking around the facility’s operations rooms and employees apparently carrying on with their work as usual.

In the capital, Damascus, the rebels kept the battle going mostly in northeastern and southern neighborhoods as the fighting gets closer to the heart of President Bashar Assad’s seat of power.

The capture of the al-Furat dam came after rebels seized two smaller dams on the Euphrates river, which flows from Turkey through Syria and into Iraq. Behind al-Furat dam lies Lake Assad, which at 640 square kilometers (247 square miles) is the country’s largest water reservoir.

The dam produces 880 megawatts of electricity, a small amount of the country’s production. Syria’s electricity production relies on plants powered by natural gas and fuel oil.

Still, the capture handed the rebels control over water and electricity supplies for both government-held areas and large swaths of land the opposition has captured over the past 22 months of fighting.

“This is the most important dam in Syria. It is a strategic dam, and Lake Assad is one of the largest artificial lakes in the region,” said Rami Abdul-Rahman, who heads the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

“It supplies many areas around Syria with electricity,” Abdul-Rahman said, citing the provinces of Raqqa, Hassaka and Aleppo in the north as well as Deir el-Zour in the east near the Iraqi border.

The dam, constructed in the late 1960s in cooperation with the Soviet Union, is located in a northeastern town once called Tabqa. After the dam was built, the town’s name changed to Thawra, Arabic for revolution, to mark the March 8, 1963 coup that brought Assad’s ruling Baath party to power.

Early Monday, when the rebels stormed the dam and the town, one of the first things they did was set ablaze a giant statue of the late President Hafez Assad, the current president’s father.

“This is one of the biggest projects that have a moral value in Syria’s history,” said Dubai-based Syrian economist Samir Seifan. “It was the Syrian government’s biggest project in the 20th century.”

Seifan said that the dam is “a very sensitive plant” and it is very important that technicians and experts keep it running as usual because any mistake could have dangerous consequences.

He added that any mistake could “release massive amounts of water that will drown wide areas including the city of Deir el-Zour as well as cities in Iraq.” Seifan added that “any damage will have dangerous consequences on civilians. It supplies hundreds of thousands of hectares with water.”

An amateur video released by activists showed rebels walking through large operations rooms as employees went on with their work as usual.

“The al-Furat dam is now in the hands of the Free Syrian Army heroes,” says the narrator. “And these are the workers, continuing their work as usual.”

The video appeared genuine and corresponded to other Associated Press reporting on the events depicted.