CAIRO — A day after Syrian security forces killed protesters in the central city of Homs, thousands returned to the streets Monday for funerals that quickly ignited into renewed antigovernment protests, according to witnesses and activists reached by phone. At least 14 people died Sunday in clashes with security forces, witnesses said, including a police officer and two of his sons.var _obj = new NYTMM.FadingSlideShow($("nytmm_embed947"),190,126,chameleonData); _obj.setPhotoData(chameleonData.photos); Video interviews with more than two dozen people under 30, from Libya to the West Bank, talking about their generation’s moment in history and prospects for the future.

Mourners said traditional prayers for the dead in the town’s central New Clocktower Square on Monday before launching into rounds of clapping and chants, shouting for the downfall of President Bashar al-Assad. Funeral marchers lofted at least four coffins overhead, The Associated Press reported.

The clashes late Sunday night capped a day in which thousands of protesters took to the streets across Syria, widening their challenge to the Assad family’s iron-fisted autocracy and rejecting the Syrian president’s latest effort to mollify them. Earlier Sunday, security officers also responded with deadly force, witnesses reported, firing live ammunition at a funeral and seizing critically wounded demonstrators from a hospital.

Sunday’s protests amounted to a brazen dismissal of the steps outlined by the president in a televised address Saturday, notably the lifting of the country’s 48-year-old state of emergency before the end of this week. The protests have posed an unprecedented challenge to the rule of Mr. Assad, who has clearly been shaken by the upheavals that have felled longstanding governments in Tunisia and Egypt and are threatening those in Yemen, Bahrain and Libya.

The worst of the violence appeared to be in Homs and the nearby town of Talbesa.

Razan Zeitouneh, an activist with the Syrian Human Rights Information Link, said as many as 20 people might have died in Homs. Security forces opened fire on a crowd of protesters with live ammunition and tear gas, said another witness reached by phone. State media reported that a "group of armed criminals" fired from rooftops, killing the police officer.

In Talbesa, two died when security forces fired tear gas and live ammunition on a funeral procession, sending the town into chaos and leaving at least 15 wounded, said a witness and Ms. Zeitouneh. Security forces reportedly arrested a number of severely wounded protesters from the town’s main hospital, she added, raising fears that at least 12 listed in critical condition could die. State news media, reflecting the official version of events, said one policeman was killed and 11 were wounded by rooftop snipers from a “group of armed criminals.”

Ms. Zeitouneh also said she had received reports from the coastal town of Latakia, that security forces had opened fire Sunday night on protesters there as well. The number of casualties was not immediately known. Wissam Tarif, executive director of Insan, a Syrian human rights group, said that five died in Latakia.

Human rights activists said on Monday that security forces in both Homs and Latakia were arresting injured protesters from inside local hospitals, leading a doctor in Homs to fear that as many as a dozen patients in critical condition may have died in detention. In both cities many injured protesters were receiving treatment in homes, hiding from both security forces and hospitals.

The Syrian protests coincided with new disclosures that in 2005 the United States began to secretly finance some Syrian opposition groups intent on toppling Mr. Assad. The disclosures, in diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks, showed State Department funding for Barada TV, an anti-Assad satellite broadcaster run by Syrian exiles in London, as well as concern by American diplomats in Syria that Syrian intelligence agents began to suspect the American financing two years ago.

It was unclear whether the secret financing has since ended, but an April 2009 cable said a State Department program called the Middle East Partnership Initiative was to have distributed $12 million to an array of Syrian projects by September 2010. The existence of the cables was first reported Sunday night on The Washington Post’s Web site.

A September 2009 cable reported on a Syrian crackdown against groups and individuals that had received American funding.

“Over the past six months, SARG security agents have increasingly questioned civil society and human rights activists about U.S. programming in Syria and the region,” said the cable, using an acronym for Syrian Arab Republic government. It said some news media figures had been interrogated about funding and that an imprisoned human rights lawyer, Muhanad al-Hasani, faced new charges of illegally receiving United States government funding.

Scott Shane contributed reporting from Washington, and J. David Goodman from New York.

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