BEIRUT, Lebanon — Syrian security forces fired at mourners in the central city of Homs during a funeral procession on Saturday for eight protesters who died the previous day, killing at least five people and wounding several others, witnesses and human rights activists said.
The fresh round of violence came as the death toll from Friday’s protests reached 44, according to the Syrian National Organization for Human Rights. More than half of the victims on Friday died in Idlib Province, where tanks had been deployed on Friday as part of the attempt to crush antigovernment protests by sending troops into restive towns and cities. The bloodshed on Saturday followed the pattern in recent weeks in Syria, in which killings on Fridays — the Muslim holy day, when some of the largest demonstrations of the Arab Spring have been held — have led to more protests and deaths.
One witness said the shooting began as mourners were chanting “Rest in peace, martyr, we will continue on the same path” as well as “The people want to topple the regime” and “Freedom, freedom.”
“A lot of people were injured. There was blood everywhere,” said the witness, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “They were firing at us directly.”
Ammar Qurabi, who leads the Syrian human rights group, said he too had been told that the shooting began as the funeral turned into a protest. “The neighborhood is now under fire and completely surrounded,” he said.
Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, has blamed the protests against his 11-year-old rule on armed Islamist groups. The government said Saturday that Islamist militants had killed 17 people, including civilians, police and security forces, in Idlib and Homs, the city that is emerging as a locus of the challenge to Mr. Assad’s authority, on Friday.
The Syrian state news agency, Sana, said the killings occurred after armed groups exploited specific instructions given to security forces “not to shoot, to preserve the lives of civilians.” The agency did not provide details on how the deaths occurred. Human rights activists said that nearly 900 people had been killed in the past nine weeks in the Syrian uprising and that 10,000 protesters and activists were in jail.
The United States has begun taking a harder stand against Mr. Assad. The Obama administration imposed sanctions on Mr. Assad last week, and the president used some of his strongest language yet to denounce the crackdown, saying Syria’s leader should lead a transition to democracy or “get out of the way.”
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