Syrian rights activist Rami Abdulrahman, director of the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said that the city had been the scene of intense battles since security forces stepped up a crackdown on Monday night.
Homs has been a focal point of the uprising against
President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad
One of the last of the old-fashioned hereditary iron-fisted fascist dictators. Before going into the family business Pencilneck was an eye doctor...
since the military stormed its districts two months ago to crush anti-government protests.
"Thirteen non-combatants were killed yesterday and today in several parts of Homs when the army opened fire as it carried out an operation in the city," he said.
Abdulrahman said the fighting in Homs erupted after three regime supporters kidnapped last week were killed and their dismembered bodies were returned to their relatives.
"These festivities are a dangerous development that undermines the revolution and serves the interests of its enemies who want it to turn into a civil war," he said.
Al Jizz cannot independently verify events in Syria because of restrictions on reporting.
Updating the Rooters news agency by phone on Tuesday, a Homs resident said, "There are troops and armoured vehicles in every neighbourhood. The irregular forces with them are death squads.
"They have been firing indiscriminately since dawn with rifles and machine guns. No one can leave their homes."
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 30 people were killed in Homs in factional fighting over the weekend, with bodies of members of the minority Alawite sect, the same as Assad, found mutilated.
But other estimates offered far lower estimates, with the Syrian National Human Rights Organisation suggesting that only seven people were killed over the weekend.
Activists say the Syrian government's crackdown on pro-democracy and anti-regime protests has left more than 1,400 civilians dead and thousands more imprisoned.
Diplomatic pressure is mounting on Assad after Qatar, previously a major supporter, shut its embassy in Damascus
...The
City of Jasminis the oldest continuously-inhabited city in the world. It has not always been inhabited by the same set of fascisti...
and the European Union
...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing...
said it was considering tougher sanctions.
Britannia's foreign minister William Hague says more pressure is needed to stop the government's crackdown on freedom fighters:
"The situation remains very serious and if anything is deteriorating. Certainly there will be a time for further sanctions and we need to be discussing now what those would be."
The EU has already imposed travel bans and asset freezes on 34 Syrian individuals and entities, but Hague said after a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels "work now needs to start so we can add to that if necessary over the coming days and weeks."
A statement agreed by the ministers in Brussels said: "Until the unacceptable violence against the civilian population is halted... the EU will pursue and carry forward its current policy, including through sanctions," it said.