Syrian activists called for a "day of defiance" in Damascus Sunday after security forces shot dead a mourner at a funeral that turned into one of the largest anti-regime rallies ever seen in the capital.
Regime forces also kept up their pounding of the flashpoint central city of Homs and killed at least four people on Sunday, activists said, while official SANA news agency reported the murder of a prosecutor and a judge in Idlib.
"We expect huge demonstrations," in Damascus, Deeb Al-Dimashqi, a member of the Syrian Revolution Council based in the capital told AFP, adding that Syrian forces had clamped tight security around the city.
"There is a large security presence," he said, adding that demonstrators were expected to defy the clampdown and stage demonstrations in several parts of the city, including in Mazzeh, where the mourner was killed on Saturday.
In a message to Damascus residents on their "Syrian Revolution 2011" Facebook page, activists said: "The blood of the martyrs exhorts you to disobedience," after 6,000 people were killed since protests against the regime of President Bashar Al-Assad erupted in March.
Security forces shot dead a woman when they stormed the town of Sukhna in the Homs province to track down wanted activists, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in a statement.
It also said that a man was shot dead at a checkpoint in the northern province of Aleppo.
The Baba Amr neighbourhood of the defiant city of Homs also came under sporadic shelling by army forces on Sunday morning, the Observatory said, adding that there was heavy shooting in the area of Bab Sbaa.
And a "terrorist group" shot dead prosecutor Nidal Ghazal and judge Mohammed Ziyadeh and their driver in the northwestern province of Idlib on Sunday, SANA reported.
The agency said that another "terrorist group" killed on Saturday Jamal Bish, a member of the city council of Aleppo.
Saturday's funerals in Damascus were for four people, including two teenagers, killed the previous day when security forces fired on protesters in Mazzeh district which houses many government offices and embassies, according to human rights group and activists.
"The funerals in Mazzeh turned into protests -- it was the closest major gathering to Omayyad Square" in the city centre, Observatory head Rami Abdul Rahman told AFP.
Mohammed Shami, a spokesman for activists in Damascus province, echoed him.
"It's the first time there have been demonstrations of such a scale so close to the centre of Damascus," Shami said of Saturday's funeral, adding that some 15,000 people had turned out despite snowfall.
He said the shootings during the funerals, in which many people were wounded, were followed by a "wave of searches and arrests" across the leafy, upscale residential district which is overlooked by the presidential palace.
"People hid wherever they could," he said. "State television didn't cover what happened even though it was only a short distance from the Radio and Television Organisation."
Activists described demonstrations held on Friday in Damascus as "unprecedented", saying there were 49 in all.
"We said from the onset that the day when huge demonstrations will spill out in Damascus and (Syria's second city) Aleppo, it will be the end of the regime," said Agnes Levallois, a Paris-based Middle East expert.
The Observatory said the security forces killed a total of at least 11 civilians across the country on Saturday.
Meanwhile, the Syrian army has been laying siege to the ancient city of Palmyra, a world heritage site, since early February and shooting at anything that moves from a historic citadel, residents said.
"Palmyra is surrounded by the army from all fronts: the Arab citadel, the olive and palm tree groves, the desert, the city," one resident told AFP by telephone, adding that the operation began on 4 February.
Security forces have set up camp in the citadel which overlooks the Roman ruins and the city of some 60,000 people, said the resident who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals.
On Thursday, Syrian opposition groups rejected a newly drafted constitution that could end nearly five decades of single-party rule, and urged voters to boycott a 26 February referendum on the charter.
After talks Saturday with President Bashar Al-Assad, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Zhai Jun called on all sides to stop the violence, saying it was vital that "calm be restored as quickly as possible," state media said.
China has twice joined Russia in blocking UN Security Council condemnation of the Damascus regime's crackdown.
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