Most of Friday's victims were killed in the Idlib province, where all week troops backed by tanks and armoured personnel carriers have swept through villages to crush dissent against Assad's autocratic regime.

"Sixteen people were killed" in Idlib on Friday," Ammar Qorabi, the head of the National Organisation for Human Rights, told AFP in Nicosia. Three of them were women who died when the army shelled a chicken hatchery in the village of Al-Bara, Qorabi said.

Another 10 people were killed when security forces opened fire to disperse protests in several cities, including eight in the central protest hub of Homs and two in Qadam.