At least 55 people were killed across Syria on Friday as protesters took to the streets in several provinces after being urged to call for a "People's liberation war."

The Local Coordination Committees, the main activist group spurring protests on the ground, said regime forces killed 16 people in the countryside around Damascus, 11 in Daraa, nine in Idlib, eight in Homs, four in Damascus and two in Hama.

The U.N. Human Rights Council on Friday tightened pressure on Syria with a new resolution condemning the violence there and demanding all sides abide by envoy Kofi Annan's peace plan.

Forty-one of the 47 members of the council voted in favor of the resolution lodged by the United States and Turkey.

Russia said Friday it "categorically" rejected the idea it was siding with Bashar Assad's regime in the Syria conflict, after Moscow's position was slammed at the Friends of Syria meeting in Paris.

"I categorically reject the formulation that Russia supports (President) Bashar Assad's regime in the situation that has developed in Syria," said Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle called Friday for a non-military U.N. resolution and tough sanctions as a way of piling pressure on the Syrian regime to stop a deadly crackdown on opposition.

At a meeting in Paris seeking to coordinate Western and Arab efforts to stop the violence, he stressed that a peaceful and democratic transition "excludes a political role for (President Bashar) Assad."

The head of the main opposition Syrian National Council on Friday called for humanitarian corridors and a no-fly zone as over 100 nations met in Paris to discuss an end to the 16-month bloody crisis.

"All steps have to be taken to establish a humanitarian corridor and a no-fly zone," Abdel Basset Sayda said, claiming that the regime of President Bashar Assad "is about to fall."

Turkish leaders observed a moment of silence Friday at the funeral of two pilots of a fighter jet shot down by Syria last month in an incident that has escalated tensions between the two former allies.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan interrupted his vacation to attend the ceremony at the Erhac airbase, from which the F-4 Phantom took off before Syrian defense forces downed it over the Mediterranean Sea on June 22.

A world meeting on Syria urged the U.N. Friday to use the threat of sanctions to force change in Syria as President Bashar Assad was rocked by the defection of one of his most senior generals.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also rounded on Russia and China, telling delegates from over 100 countries gathered in Paris that the two veto-wielding U.N. Security Council members were blocking progress towards peace.

A top general close to Syria's President Bashar Assad has defected, in a move hailed by Washington and the Syrian opposition as a major blow to Damascus, a source close to the regime told Agence France Presse on Friday.

"General Manaf Tlass defected three days ago," the source close to the Syrian government said on condition of anonymity.

Two key figures of the Syrian opposition against President Bashar Assad are due in Moscow next week as Russia seeks to promote dialogue as the way out of the Syrian crisis, a report said Friday.

Russia on Wednesday will host the new head of the exiled Syrian National Council (SNC), Abdel Basset Sayda, a Foreign Ministry source told the Interfax news agency.

Troops rained shells on the central Syrian town of Daraya on Friday, killing at least one civilian, a day after nationwide violence cost the lives of more than 90 people, a rights watchdog reported.

Amateur video posted on YouTube and distributed by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights showed medical officials trying in vain to treat a bloodied person at Daraya, in the province of Damascus.