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| Homs has reportedly been a focal point of recent crackdown by the government |
Gunfire and shelling in the volatile city of Homs has claimed 23 lives, according to the opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The violence comes ahead of the arrival of Arab League observers in Damascus.
Opposition activists have urged the observers, arriving as part of a deal to try to end the violence gripping the country, to visit Homs.
Damascus says it is fighting armed gangs. The clampdown has killed more than 5,000 people, says the UN.
The latest bloodshed is reported to have taken place largely in the Baba Amr district of Homs, which is reportedly besieged by government forces. The Observatory says that area alone saw 15 deaths on Monday.
A number of people have been killed in the city by mortar shelling and machine gun fire over the last few days, activists say. It is expected to be one of the first destinations for the Arab observer mission.
The BBC's Jim Muir in Beirut says that Homs may well prove to be a test case for the observer mission in terms of ascertaining whether they truly have unrestricted access and whether there is any peace for them to monitor.
Protests against the government of President Bashar al-Assad first erupted in March.
Casualty figures are hard to verify as most foreign media are banned from reporting in Syria.
Graphic footage
About 50 Arab League monitors are expected to arrive on Monday - several days after a nine-member advance team landed in Damascus.
"We are in Damascus now and have started our mission and will head to other cities faster than you think," Sudanese General Mustafa Dabi, head of the mission, told Reuters. He had arrived as part of the advance team.
"Our Syrian brothers are co-operating very well and without any restrictions so far," he added.
The observers will split up into smaller groups and, according to the agreement, should be free to go wherever they want to see what is happening.
The observer mission will eventually have up to 200 members, and it plans to meet both government officials and the opposition.
On Sunday, the opposition Syrian National Council (SNC), the main umbrella group of Assad opponents, urged monitors to go to Homs without delay, "specifically to the besieged neighbourhoods, to fulfil their stated mission".
Graphic footage purporting to show the aftermath of heavy shelling in Baba Amr has been posted on the internet. It shows the bleeding corpses of four young men and a woman screaming for help from the international community, our correspondent says.
On Friday, two suicide car bombings in Damascus killed 44 people and left more than 150 injured, Syrian officials said. They blamed al-Qaeda, but the opposition suggested security forces were behind the blasts.
With a solid security presence, Damascus had largely escaped the violence and protests that have flared in central and northern provinces, although there have been protests in suburbs.
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem has said he expects the monitors to back the government's claim that armed gangs were behind the continuing violence
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