HUNDREDS of thousands of protesters flooded cities around Syria in one of the largest outpourings against the regime of President Bashar Assad since the uprisings began more than three months ago.

At least six people were killed in various clashes, activists said.

The demonstrations underscored the resilience of the protesters despite Assad’s relentless crackdowns. Syrian rights groups say more than 1400 people have been killed, most of them unarmed protesters, since mid-March.

The regime disputes the toll, blaming “armed thugs” and foreign conspirators for the unrest that has posed the most serious challenge to the Assad family’s 40-year ruling dynasty in Syria.

Syria-based rights activist Mustafa Osso said huge protest crowds moved into the streets after noon prayers in places across the country, including the capital Damascus. One of the largest rallies was in the central city of Hama, where about 200,000 people went out in the streets, said Omar Idilbi, a spokesman for the Local Coordination Committees, which track the protests in Syria.

Idilbi said security forces killed at least three people in another central city, Homs, after opening fire.

In separate clashes, three people were killed during a military operation seeking to choke off the flow of refugees heading across the border to Turkey, said Rami Abdul-Rahman, the London-based director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

More than 10,000 Syrians have already taken shelter in refugee camps in Turkey to escape the violence.

The Syrian government has banned most foreign media from the country and restricted coverage, making it difficult to get independent confirmation of events on the ground.

A video posted on the Local Coordination Committees’ Facebook page showed dozens of people marching outside a mosque in Damascus’ central neighbourhood of Midan as they chanted “Bashar out, Syria is free”.

The refugees have been a source of deep embarrassment to Damascus, one of the most tightly controlled regimes in the Middle East.

Turkish officials said that 113 refugees had returned to Syria since Thursday and there were no new arrivals. They said the number of refugees still in Turkey is 10,497.