Iran: More than 1,000 soldiers die in Syria since 2011

More than 1,000 soldiers deployed by Iran to Syria to back government forces in the civil war have been killed, an Iranian official said on Tuesday

The death toll was a major increase from one reported just four months ago when Iran announced 400 of its soldiers had died on Syria's battlefields.

Iran has been sending fighters to Syria since the early stages of the more than five-year-old war to support its ally, President Bashar al-Assad, against armed groups trying to topple him.

Although many of the soldiers Iran sends are its own nationals, it is casting its recruitment net wide, training and deploying predominantly Shia-Muslim fighters from neighbouring Afghanistan and Pakistan as well. Afghan citizens represented half the death toll reported in August.