Shanti Abdallah, a resident in a nearby community, said that a local mosque was being destroyed, and dozens of houses were burning. His children were among those injured.

According to reports in Arab and international media, clashes with the regime are taking place on the outskirts of Damascus and the cities of Homs and Hama. These are the first reports to emerge since it was established in the early 1950s that Syria was in the grip of an insurgency.

The unrest has resulted in many deaths by the regime and the regime’s allies, including the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), and even has involved the abduction in 2012 of several Westerners.

However, reports from inside the country also indicate that the country is largely subdued by the ongoing clashes.

A rebel commander who spoke to Al Jazeera said that the clashes in Homs and Hama were very rare, compared to other locations, and that the government has a strong ground presence as well.

“The regime has been very clear that there will be no bloodshed in any of the cities of Hama and Homs and no people will be killed, there will be no clashes,” the commander said.

Al Jazeera’s Fares Akram, reporting from Damascus, said that the clashes were the first that had taken place since the formation of the Free Syrian Army in April 2013.

“The Free Syrian Army never had a presence in the towns and villages in the north of Syria until recently,” said Akram.

The spokesman for the FSA’s Syrian Network for Human Rights, who has been interviewed by Reuters, said the country’s political and civil authorities had been very slow in providing necessary help to the area.

“Since 2011 when the fighting began, there have been lots of clashes. But the conflict has been very slow. There is a huge lack of resources to get to the people in these places,” the spokesman said.

“If the fighting continues to escalate, the situation could quickly spiral out of control.”

Meanwhile, the BBC reports that the fighting in the southern province of Daraa is intensifying and the government is sending reinforcements from the region to the area around Damascus.

In one of the pictures posted on social media, a man, believed to be from inside Syria, is shown dragging the body of a dead body from an alleyway by its feet.

Al Jazeera’s Fahad Azima, reporting from a rebel