Syria imposed on Tuesday a total ban on all demonstrations after warning of a crackdown on an "armed revolt" by Islamist radicals and security forces fired on protesters in the city of Homs, killing at least four.

Interior Minister Mohammed Ibrahim al-Shaar told people "to refrain from taking part in all marches, demonstrations or sit-ins under any banner whatsoever," state news agency SANA reported.

In the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, people keep a close eye on life back in Syria, which they consider home, and political unrest there has left the local community both anxious and divided.

In recent weeks, the Druze town of Majdal Shams has been watching pro-reform demonstrators staging protests in cities across Syria, demanding more political freedom and an end to repressive emergency laws.

Fresh protests shook Syria on Monday as thousands took to the streets a day after 11 people were killed by security forces as the clamor for an end to martial law billowed, activists said.

Protests gripped the central city of Homs, the protest hub of Daraa in the south as well as in Jisr al-Shoughour near the northwestern city of Idleb despite pledges by the president to lift a draconian emergency law.

A pledge by Syria's embattled president to lift almost 50 years of draconian emergency rule within a week was brushed aside as not enough on Sunday, as activists called for more protests.

President Bashar al-Assad's long-awaited announcement came on Saturday, on the eve of Independence Day, after a month of bloody protests and a global outcry for change in the autocratic country.

The March 14 general-secretariat on Friday responded to "accusations" against the coalition of "being involved in the events in Syria."

"From the onset of the popular protests in Syria, pro-Hizbullah figures and media outlets" as well as partisans of the Syrian regime "have been fabricating lies aimed at accusing some March 14 forces of meddling in the events in Syria," the general-secretariat said in a statement.

Thousands of protesters massed across Syria after weekly Muslim prayers on Friday as a global outcry widened over a deadly crackdown on month-old, anti-regime demonstrations.

Opposition’s mouthpiece Sham News Network reported that several protesters were wounded when “thugs and security forces” opened fire on them in the Latakia neighborhood of Slaibeh.

Protests for greater freedoms spread Wednesday to Aleppo, Syria's second city, where hundreds of university students clashed with police and a smaller protest took place in the capital, rights activists told Agence France Presse by telephone.

Meanwhile, thousands of women blocked a stretch of a main coastal road in the north of the country demanding authorities release hundreds of people arrested during a crackdown on the flashpoint towns of Banias and in Baida, London-based rights activist Rami Abdul Rahman told AFP by phone.

The White House condemned escalating repression of demonstrations in Syria Tuesday as "outrageous" and expressed concern about reports that the wounded were being denied medical care.

"We are deeply concerned by reports that Syrians who have been wounded by their government are being denied access to medical care," press secretary Jay Carney said in a statement.

Al-Mustaqbal parliamentary bloc on Tuesday voiced concerns over the "negative repercussions of the delay" in forming a new cabinet.

In this regard, the bloc cited "the surfacing of further negative economic and financial indicators, the obstruction of citizens' interests, the decline in tourism and financial growth rates and the deterioration in confidence in Lebanon."

The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Lebanese Information Center on Monday hosted a presentation in Washington DC by prominent Lebanese journalist May Chidiac.

The presentation, held at the Woodrow Wilson Center Headquarters, was titled “The Political Situation in Lebanon with an Eye on What is Happening in Syria.”