Beirut-Syrian security forces opened fire before dawn on hundreds of anti-government demonstrators staging a sit-in, shooting live ammunition and tear gas before they hunt through the streets for hours, witnesses said Tuesday.

There were victims but the exact number was not immediately clear.

"They shot at everything, there was smoke everywhere," an activist in the central city of Homs told The Associated Press by telephone, asking that his name not be used because he feared for his personal safety. "I saw people on the ground, some shot in their feet, some in the stomach."

The streets were largely deserted by early afternoon, with people stay inside their homes.

Monday, hundreds of people had gathered on the square of the clock in the Centre of Homs, mattresses, food and water to bring it to the site for a deadlock Egypt-style. They vowed to stay until President Bashar Assad is ousted--a brutal escalation of the monthlong rebellion against the country's authoritarian regime.

An eyewitness said police used loudspeakers to call on protestors to evacuate the area around 2 hours shortly thereafter, life security forces moved in, firing tear gas, then first ammunition on demonstrators on the run.

"They went to people at home, they arrested many," a resident Homs said by telephone. "We heard ambulances all night."

Three people in Homs confirmed the account, all of them asking for anonymity, for fear of reprisals from the Government.

The witnesses accounts cannot be independently confirmed because Syria has severe restrictions placed on media and foreign journalists expelled.

At least 200 people have died in the past month, as security forces have launched a deadly crackdown on a growing protest movement, say human rights groups. The Government has dry promises of reform should be accompanied with brutal tactics to quell the unrest, using the much despised unleash security forces and pro-regime villains known as shabiha.

The Government on Monday blamed the weeks of turmoil in ultra-conservative Muslims looking for a fundamentalist state--the last attempt to portray the reform movement such as populated by extremists.

Assad has played on the fears of sectarian warfare as he works to crush any popular support for the uprising.

The impasse in Homs Egypt-style funeral processions followed by more than 10,000 mourners for some of those killed in the clashes Sunday that left a rights group said at least 12 people dead.

The demonstrators, mostly young men but also women and children, had set up tents, bringing in mattresses, food and drink. A tent was declared a "national unity tent." Another "martyrs" tent set up to express support for the dead a day earlier, according to an eyewitness.

"Go," a banner afsmeektet Assad.

The Government has in the past want to stir up unrest for many of the murders "armed gangs" debt.

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