DAMASCUS: Syrian security forces shot dead four soldiers trying to desert on Monday, as troops deployed in villages near the Turkish border and the Qusseir region of central Homs province, activists said.

“Four soldiers in Maar Shamsa in (northwestern) Idlib were shot dead while trying to flee the Wadi Deif military camp,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The Britain-based group also reported soaring tensions in Homs province, a hub of protests against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

“Tension is high in Homs province. The army has deployed in the villages of the Qusseir region (south of Homs), where two unidentified bodies were found in the Assi river.”

”There are also mutilated bodies at the National Hospital” in Qusseir, where 12 people were killed and 15 were reported missing in military operations on Saturday, the Observatory said.

North of Homs, “many security checkpoints have been set up on the roads leading to Rastan, where heavy machine-gun fire was heard this morning,” the rights group added.

The deputy dean of the faculty of architecture at Al-Baath University in Homs, Mohammed Ali Aqil, was killed on Monday by unknown assailants, the Observatory reported.

In Idlib province in the northwest, the military and security forces stormed villages east of the city of Saraqeb, setting up roadblocks and arresting 17 people.

The Observatory also said that in the rebel city of Hama, “a civilian died and three others were wounded by gunfire on Sunday night on the Mhardeh-Hilfaya road.”

The bodies of four civilians who went missing on September 16 at Hilfaya in Hama province were also returned to their families.

In the southern city of Dael in Daraa province, where the first protests ignited in mid-March, intense gunfire was heard throughout the night after the city council building was set on fire, which residents blamed on pro-regime militias.

Students staged demonstrations in several Daraa cities, the Observatory added.

Meanwhile, the state-run SANA news agency reported the seizure of “arms and ammunition” in a house in the Daraa village of Nassib near the Jordanian border, and the discovery of a carload of “Israeli arms and explosives charges in Homs.”

SANA also reported the funeral of four soldiers and security officers, as well as that of a doctor who had been killed in Homs.

Damascus does not accept the existence of popular opposition to the authorities, instead blaming “armed gangs” and “terrorists” for trying to sow chaos.

The United Nations says that the Assad regime's crackdown on protests that erupted in mid-March has killed more than 2,700 people. The Observatory says 15,000 people have been arrested.