The news, confirmed by the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, comes one day after at least 13 people were killed in protests demanding major reforms in Syria, which the Baath party has ruled for close to 50 years.

Assad's government had announced a string of reforms on Thursday, including the release of all activists detained this month and the possibility of ending emergency rule, in place since 1963.

But protesters have vowed to keep hitting the streets until their demands for "freedom" are met.

A Facebook group that has emerged as a motor behind a string of demonstrations that have surfaced in Syria this month drummed up support for more rallies on Saturday, the morning after more than a dozen died in protests across the country.

Protests in cities across Syria have turned increasingly violent, with 13 people officially confirmed dead Friday in Homs, a suburb of Damascus and the southern town of Sanamen.

A Syrian official, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, said two firemen were among the 13 killed.

Activists said at least 25 people were killed on the Muslim day of prayer and rest.

Amnesty International reported the death toll was at least 55 during a week of unrest in and around Daraa, a tribal town close to Syria's southern border with Jordan.

Daraa has emerged as the hub of the protests and has sustained the most casualties.

Demonstrators in the town tore down a statue of late president Hafez al-Assad, father of Bashar, and burned the home of the governor, who had been fired from his post.

While authorities have clamped down on demonstrations in the capital, hundreds of protesters marched Friday from the landmark Omayyed mosque through Damascus' Old City chanting "Daraa is Syria" and "We will sacrifice ourselves for Syria" before police moved in.

Assad supporters shouted back: "God, Syria and Bashar," as convoys in support of Assad took to the streets.

At least five protesters were taken away by officers in plain clothes, according to an AFP correspondent.

Thousands of Assad supporters flooded the streets of Damascus on foot and in cars and buses on Friday night, chanting their loyalty to the Baath party and the Assads in counter-protests that continued into the early morning.

Men, women and children clogged several main roads in Damascus, honking their horns, singing and waving Syrian flags and pictures of Hafez and Bashar al-Assad.

The crackdown by Syrian authorities on the protests has drawn harsh rebukes from the United Nations, France, Britain, the United States, which has issued the latest of an almost daily string of condemnations.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on Saturday warned Syria the violent crackdown on "reformist" protests risked plunging the country into a "downward spiral" of violence.

Navi Pillay urged Syria "to draw lessons from recent events across the Middle East and North Africa which clearly demonstrate that violent repression of peaceful protest not only does not resolve the grievances of people taking to the streets, it risks creating a downward spiral of anger, violence, killings and chaos." (AFP)

Global Arab Network