(CNN) -- The death toll in Syria is probably now approaching 70,000, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said Tuesday.
In early January, Pillay said that 60,000 people in Syria had died, a figure that she called "truly shocking." She blamed the international community for failing to act.
At that time, CNN tried to put the number in perspective. Sixty thousand people is roughly the population of Terre Haute, Indiana; or Cheyenne, Wyoming. It's how many people would fit in Dodger Stadium, and it's more than the 50,000-plus U.S. combat deaths in Vietnam.
The war in Syria has been raging since March 2011 when protesters, partly inspired by Arab Spring uprisings in the region, began demonstrating for more freedom. That movement quickly morphed into a movement against President Bashar al-Assad, who was appointed president by Syria's rubber-stamp parliament in 2000 after his father died.....
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