Syrian troops have targeted forces opposed to President Bashar Assad in clashes that have left seven soldiers and policemen dead, a military official said.
The official said the troops conducted a "qualitative" operation yesterday and today in the town of Rastan in the central Homs province.
He said the Syrian troops were killed by "gunmen". The comments were carried by state-run news agency SANA.
Rastan has witnessed some of the fiercest fighting in the six-month uprising against the president, pitting the military against hundreds of army defectors, according to activists.
The official said 32 Syrian troops were also wounded in the effort to crush "gunmen" holed up inside the town.
He said the gunmen had terrorised citizens, blocked roads and set up barriers and explosives, and were responsible for the deaths of the seven troops.
The town of Rastan, from which the Syrian army draws many of its Sunni Muslim recruits, has seen some of the largest numbers of defections to date.
A prominent human rights activist estimated there were around 2,000 defectors fighting in Rastan and nearby Talbiseh as well as in the Jabal al-Zawiyah region in the northern Idlib province.
The defections, as well as reports that once-peaceful Syrian protesters are increasingly taking up arms, have raised concerns of the risk of civil war in Syria.
Syria has a volatile sectarian divide, making civil unrest one of the most dire scenarios. The Assad regime is dominated by the Alawite minority, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, but the country is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim.
The UN says some 2,700 people have already died in the government crackdown.
The report carried by SANA was an acknowledgment of the stiff resistance and ongoing clashes in Rastan, although the agency, echoing the official government line, describes the fighters as "terrorist armed groups," not defectors.
The military official said the confrontation resulted in the killing and detention of many of the gunmen. He said Syrian troops were still pursuing members of the terrorist groups in an effort to restore security to Rastan.
Later, activists said Syrian security forces had opened fire at thousands of protesters calling for the downfall of the regime.
The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least seven people were wounded today in the city of Homs. It said there were also casualties in the city of Hama.
The Observatory said the protests spread from the capital Damascus to the southern province of Daraa, the north-western province of Idlib as well as the central regions of Hama and Homs.