Since the demise of Muammar Qaddafi's rule over Libya, activists and residents have reported increasing defections among Syrian troops, as well as more intense street protests in a five-month-old popular uprising against the president.

They say there have been desertions in eastern Deir Al-Zour province, northwestern Idlib province, the Homs countryside and the outskirts of Damascus, where President Bashar Assad's forces fought gunbattles with defectors on Sunday.

At least 40 light tanks and armored vehicles, and 20 buses of troops and military intelligence, deployed at 5:30 a.m. at the highway entrance of Rastan, 20 km north of the city of Homs and began firing heavy machine guns at the town, two residents said.

"The tanks deployed at both banks of the highway, which remained open, and fired long bursts from their machine guns at Rastan," one of the residents, who gave his name as Raed, told Reuters by telephone.

He said defections began in the town when it was stormed by tanks three months ago to crush large street protests against Assad in an assault that killed dozens of civilians.

Rastan is situated at the main highway leading to Turkey. Troops backed by tanks also entered the town of Qara on the same highway south of the city of Homs, which has been scene of daily protests, killing one resident and arresting tens of people in house-to-house raids, activists said.

"These armored assaults on outlying areas are designed to crush protests and to contain any defections in the army," said a Syrian political analyst in Damascus, who did not want to be named because of fear for his safety.

Elsewhere, security forces killed six people and wounded dozens on Monday in raids in the northwest and around the capital, as tanks rumbled into a village bordering Lebanon further south, rights groups said.

A child was among five people killed when troops and security forces opened fire during search operations in the Sarmin district of the northwest province of Idlib, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. One of the five died when part of his home was leveled as security forces raked houses in Sarmin with heavy machine-gun fire, the head of the Britain-based Observatory, Rami Abdel Rahman, said.

At least 60 people were also wounded in Sarmin and six houses were partly destroyed, he said by telephone.

A sixth person was killed when security forces raided his home at dawn in the town of Qara outside Damascus during an arrest operation, the Local Coordination Committees reported. Around 10 trucks and armored vehicles entered Qara, said the group which organizes anti-regime protests and has militants on the ground across Syria. It said some 40 people whose names were on a "wanted list" were detained.

Meanwhile, troops backed by tanks and personnel carriers early on Monday stormed the village of Hitt, two km from the border with Lebanon, south of Homs, Abdel Rahman said. "There has been high intensity gunfire since 9 a.m.," he said, adding that at least five people were wounded and 13 arrested.

"The homes of activists wanted by the authorities were torched," he added.

Dozens of refugees, including one suffering gunshot wounds, poured into northern Lebanon on Monday. "Some 12 families have crossed into Lebanon from the border town of Hitt," said Mohammed Al-Khatib, a van driver who had been transferring the refugees from the crossing into the northern Lebanese areas of Akroum and Wadi Khaled. Khatib said the refugees had arrived in Lebanon via the illegal border crossing of Al-Nasoub.

In another development, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov delivered a message from President Dmitry Medvedev to Assad on Monday, sources on both sides said, without divulging its contents.

Russia's UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin had said last week that Moscow would send an envoy to Damascus as the UN Security Council remained divided over new sanctions on Syria over its deadly crackdown on dissent.