Given the brief and limited nature of the monitors' tour on Tuesday, the comment by their chief alarmed opposition activists who fear the mission could end up cloaking Damascus in respectability, whitewashing President Bashar Assad's record.
The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said security forces killed 15 people across the country on Tuesday, six of them in Homs. It said 34 were killed the day before.
"Some places looked a bit of a mess but there was nothing frightening," Sudanese Gen. Mustafa Dabi, chief of the monitoring contingent, told Reuters by telephone from Damascus.
"The situation seemed reassuring so far," he said Wednesday after his team's foray into the city of one million people, the epicenter of anti-Assad upheaval inspired by the fall of several other Arab autocrats in uprisings this year.
"Yesterday was quiet and there were no clashes. We did not see tanks but we did see some armored vehicles. But remember this was only the first day and it will need investigation. We have 20 people who will be there for a long time."
Syria's Addounia television quoted Dabi as saying "Yes ... we saw gunmen in the city of Homs."
On Wednesday residents of the Baba Amro neighborhood of Homs initially refused to allow Arab League monitors in because an army officer was accompanying them. Later the officer agreed to stay out of the restive neighborhood, thus allowing a group of observers to enter Baba Amro, the Observatory reported.
The residents asked the monitors to "come and see the wounded people and the parents of the martyrs, and not members of the (ruling) Baath party," the head of the Observatory, Rami Abdel Rahman, said.
The monitors also visited the Bab Sebaa quarter of Homs, where according to the Observatory the regime had organized a parade in support of Assad.
The regime withdrew tanks from the streets of Homs, where hundreds of people have died in the nine-month crackdown on dissent, just hours before the observers arrived there on Tuesday and "could be back in five minutes," said Abdel Rahman.
At least seven people were wounded on Wednesday in the city of Hama when security forces used live ammunition and tear gas to disperse a protest against Assad, just a day before a visit by the monitors.
Live pictures on Al Jazeera television showed gunfire and black smoke rising above a street in Hama as dozens of protesters chanted: "Where are the Arab monitors?"
In its footage, Al Jazeera showed one man bleeding from the neck as others shouted in the background. The Observatory said the protesters were heading toward Orontes Square in the city center for a sit-in at the symbolic location where demonstrations were crushed earlier this year.
Hama, 240 km north of Damascus, was the site of the biggest massacre in the country's modern history. Troops overran Hama during a rebellion in 1982. Up to 30,000 people were killed.
