BEIRUT: More than 120,000 fighters supporting Syrian President Bashar Assad have been killed in the country’s civil war since it began in 2011, an anti-regime group monitoring the war said Wednesday.

In total, more than 200,000 people have been killed and millions more have fled their homes.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said some 11,000 members of government forces and loyalist militias had been killed in the five months since Assad delivered an inauguration speech for a third presidential term.

In a breakdown of the casualties, the group said some 5,631 armed forces members have been killed in violence including shelling, gunfights, aircraft crashes, suicide attacks, snipers, executions and car bombs since the speech.

Another 4,492 fighters from loyalist militias had been killed, as well as 735 fighters of Arab, Asian and Iranian origin, and 91 from Lebanon’s Hezbollah, the Observatory said.

Shiite fighters including from Iraq and Lebanon have joined Syria’s fight to aid Assad against the rebels trying to overthrow him.

Assad was inaugurated for a third presidential term in July after winning an election the opposition denounced as a farce.

Exact death tolls in the conflict have been difficult to verify, but the figures calculated by the Observatory are widely regarded as credible.

The U.N. estimated in August more than 190,000 people had died in the conflict.

The announcement came after regime troops abandoned the sprawling Wadi Deif military base in Idlib province, when Islamist militias killed more than 100 troops in a 24-hour battle and captured a number of others.

Clashes Wednesday between regime forces and rebel groups, as well as regime airstrikes, were reported in more than half a dozen provinces, according to state media, activist groups and the Observatory.

It said regime forces gained ground around the Deir al-Zor military airport, which has been besieged by ISIS militants, and elsewhere in the provincial capital, while rebel groups made small gains north of Aleppo, where regime forces have been trying to close off a rebel supply route.

Rebels also launched a rare Grad missile strike on a military airport in the coastal town of Jableh, but there was no information about casualties.

Also, the Observatory said the death toll from government airstrikes the day before in the last rebel-held area of Homs had reached 32.

It said 11 members of a family in the neighborhood of Waer were killed, along with five children, three from the same family. A member of a negotiating team and his wife were also among the victims.

Talks on a truce for Waer have been held periodically in recent months, with no results.

In New York, the U.N. Security Council agreed to extend for a year cross-border deliveries of desperately needed humanitarian aid to rebel-held areas.

The 15-member council voted unanimously to renew authorization through January 2016 for the U.N. convoys who cross into Syria from Turkey, Jordan and Iraq, without the consent of the Damascus regime.

The measure was first adopted in July with the backing of Russia, Syria’s ally, to help ease the suffering of 12 million Syrians in urgent need of aid.