THIS weekend in Syria was one of the bloodiest since protests began in March. Forty-four people were shot dead on Friday. On Saturday a further eleven were killed in the central city of Homs while attending funerals of those who died there the day before.

Driving into Homs during the week, the city feels normal, bar a checkpoint on entry. People do their shopping and sip coffee in the centre of town. But on Fridays Homs feels like a city under siege. Yellow plastic signs, rocks and dustbins are set up as roadblocks. Gunshots echo around the streets of restless neighbourhoods. On the outskirts of the city tanks inexpertly plastered with pictures of Bashar Assad, the Syrian president, lie close to a mall with its windows blown out. Soldiers loll on patches grass. Sandbags mark the corners of troubled neighbourhoods. In the evening the atmosphere is intimidating and threatening. Checkpoints proliferate, manned by armed personnel in plain clothes. Some are the security forces and some from Alawite gangs, say residents.

The security forces have blocked protesters from reaching the town's central New Clock square since a large sit-in took place on April 18th which was violently broken up. Around the square, windows are still boarded up. But Homs's protesters—young men for the most part—are defiant. Dressed in tracksuits and with flushed faces after Friday's protests, they are eager to talk. They all say the same thing: they are angry that they cannot find work, angry that they cannot earn enough money to buy the houses they need to get married. They are tired the pervasive control exercised by the security forces who have to sign off on everything. And they are fed up with the city's rampant corruption.

These young men may be the face of the protests, but they are supported at home by angry women and an older generation outraged by the killings, the torture of those arrested and the transformation of their city into a patchwork of no-go areas. On Fridays families turn their houses into temporary hospitals where doctors scurry to treat the injured and count the number killed. Banging his hands on the table in frustration, a doctor explains how last Friday one man died of a gunshot wound to his leg because he bled for two hours but could not be taken to hospital. People have been arrested to carrying medical supplies. Older residents drive around warning protesters gathering on street corners when security forces are near. Many have offered shelter in their homes to those fleeing the gunfire on the streets.

The rebellion in Homs, Syria's third city and the biggest to be hit by sustained unrest, is the most significant challenge to Mr Assad. Far from the glare of the media, small protests are popping up in the city's poor neighbourhoods on a nightly basis. Syria's uprising has been driven by the poorer villages and towns—where the ruling Baath Party has lost its ideological pull—so Homs is an important marker. After smaller protests and fewer deaths the previous Friday, some commentators thought that Mr Assad looked safe. But demonstrations are spreading across the country and numbers were up this week. Previously the government tried to discourage protests on Fridays by hinting at reforms on Thursdays. It is no longer even bothering to do that. Those reforms that were offered, such as the lifting of Syria's emergency law and the granting of citizenship to the Kurds, have not been carried out or have been done only symbolically.

A national dialogue, announced last Friday, has failed to get off the ground with almost all of the government's opponents unwilling to enter talks and the government showing a notable absence of sincerity. America has imposed sanctions on Syria. Last Thursday Barack Obama called for Mr Assad to lead a political transition or "get out of the way", words echoed two days later by the Turkish foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu. It is hard to imagine Mr Assad doing either. Sectarian hatred is being stirred in cities such as Homs and Banias where Alawite and Sunni neighbourhoods are sandwiched together. Frustrated protesters, keen to keep a predominantly peaceful uprising that way, see a long and violent road ahead.

Update: The death toll from the weekend is now at least 76.