Among those killed were 10 mourners at a funeral for another 10 people who were killed by security forces on July 18, the Local Coordinations Committee, an activists group, said.

Homs has been a major center of protests against Assad's rule and tension has run high between the majority Sunni inhabitants and members of the Alawite minority, the same sect as Assad.

Khalidiya is inhabited by members of Sunni tribes from rural Homs while the nearby Nozha neighborhood is home to most of the country's security forces and militiamen, from the Alawite sect.

The 16 deaths reported in Homs' Khalidiya and Bab Amr neighborhoods on July 19 brought the total death count since the weekend to at least 33, activists and residents said.

Troops and tanks first entered Homs, 165 km (100 miles) north of Damascus, two months ago and occupied the main square after large protests demanding political freedoms.

Homs, the hometown of Assad's Sunni wife Asma, has seen an influx of Alawites in the last 20 years as the community tightened its grip on security and public jobs.

The Syrian National Human Rights Organization said seven people were killed over the weekend in attacks by security forces. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the bodies of 30 people were found in Homs over the weekend, and that some were mutilated.

Human rights organizations say troops, security forces and militiamen killed at least 1,400 civilians in Syria, adding that more than 12,000 Syrians and security personnel who refused to fire at civilians had been shot dead.

Syrian authorities blame "armed terrorist groups" with Islamist links for the violence and say at least 500 policemen and soldiers have been killed since March.

Assad had described the uprising as a foreign conspiracy to sow sectarian strife. His opponents argue that the president has been playing on sectarian fears to maintain Alawite support and keep power for his family, which has ruled Syria for 41 years.

Thousands of people took to the streets of Albu Kamal in a night demonstration on July 20 demanding Assad's removal, activists said. They added that large protests also continued across Deir al-Zor, in the Qaboun district of Damascus and in other towns and cities across the country.