A Syrian human rights group says 120 people have died over the last two days at the hands of government security forces as the country continues to be rocked by a violent crackdown on anti-government demonstrations.
Ammar Qurabi, head of the National Organization for Human Rights, said 112 people were killed Friday after security forces fired bullets and tear gas at tens of thousands of protesters in cities across the country. Earlier Saturday, the death toll from Friday's violence was 75.
And Qurabi said at least eight people were killed Saturday when security forces opened fire on thousands of mourners taking part in funeral processions for those killed Friday, in the ongoing uprising against President Bashar Assad.
The killings prompted two local lawmakers, Nasser Hariri and Khalil Rifai, from the southern region of Daraa to resign.
"If I cannot protect the chests of my people from these treacherous strikes, then there is no meaning for me to stay in the People's Assembly. I declare my resignation," Hariri told Al-Jazeera.
Witnesses told reporters that security forces killed four mourners in Douma, just outside the capital, and two others in the southern village of Izraa. Eyewitness accounts from Syria cannot be independently verified because the Assad government has expelled foreign journalists from the country.
It was not immediately clear where the other two deaths in Saturday's violence occurred.
UPDATE: Canada's Foreign Affairs department has issued an advisory against all travel to Syria. "Canadians in Syria should consider leaving by commercial means while these are still available."
About 300 people have been killed since anti-government protests began last month, though Friday marked a violent escalation in the government's crackdown on demonstrators.
Saturday's funeral processions also served as makeshift demonstrations, with mourners chanting anti-government slogans as they carried coffins through the streets.
"They prevented us from continuing our way to the cemetery," said a witness in Douma. At least 50,000 people reportedly took part in funerals in the city.
In Izraa, about 5,000 people gathered outside the Osman Ibin Afan mosque to mourn the dead. As many as 18 people were killed in the village in Friday's violence, according to six Syrian human rights groups, including the National Organization for Human Rights.
On Friday, a man ran through Izraa carrying the body of a young boy who was bleeding from a devastating head wound. Amnesty International reported that among the dead from Friday's violence were a 70-year-old man and two boys aged 7 and 10.
The Syrian human rights organizations called on the government to open a judicial probe into Friday's violence.
Meanwhile, protesters are unbowed by the violent government crackdown. Instead, Syrians are congregating in increasing numbers every Friday to push for democratic reforms and the end of the Assad family dynasty, which has ruled Syria for 40 years.
While Assad has made some concessions in an effort to appease protesters and end the demonstrations -- including lifting emergency laws that granted the government sweeping surveillance and arrest powers, granting citizenship to thousands of members of Syria's Kurdish community, firing local officials and releasing political prisoners -- protesters say the gestures amount to too little, too late.
Amnesty International's Malcolm Smart said Syria's emergency laws had been in place for 48 years, "so that was a national state of emergency that really was of extraordinary length and it was used as a means to ensure repression, one-party state, no tolerance of dissent."
In an interview with CTV News Channel Saturday from London, Smart called for an independent investigation in the wake of widespread human rights abuses over the last decades and the current violent crackdown on protesters.
"There needs to be accountability," he said. "Those responsible for these gross human rights violations need to be held to account."
With files from The Associated Press
