Damascus, Sunday, February 5, 2012: The violence in Syria has claimed 48 more victims, including 18 soldiers and six army deserters, amid growing outrage following a ” massacre” in the protest city of Homs, a rights group said Sunday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights had 24 hours earlier alerted the world to over 200 deaths overnight Friday during an assault by regime forces in the central flashpoint of Homs.

Most of the casualties later in the day were also civilians with 12 people killed and thirty injured in the Damascus suburb Daraya “when security ofrces opened fire on mourners at funerals of people killed the previous day in the same town,” the Observatory’s director Rami Abdel Rahman said.

The army deaths and the deserters display the strength of feeling against the regime and its supporters.

(News agency)