Syria violence kills 40 people following a massacre in the city of Homs

Activists said security forces killed over 40 people in Syria as people in the city of Homs mourned 14 members of a family slain a day earlier, Reuters reported.

Violence and anti-Assad protests erupted on Friday following the weekly Muslim prayers.

Video posted online showed the bodies of five small children, five women and a man, piled on beds in what appeared to be an apartment after a building was hit in the city of Homs. GlobalPost could not independently verify the video.

More from GlobalPost: Massacre in Syrian city of Homs

Reuters reported that the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 22 people were killed elsewhere in Syria, including 12 caught in the crossfire when security forces fired on a funeral march in Nowa and others in Homs. Activists said 10 were killed in Aleppo.

The Syrian state news agency SANA said "terrorists" had killed a member of Syrian law enforcement in Homs on Friday and a bomb killed a child and wounded several others in Damascus.

Al Jazeera also reported a car bomb exploded on Friday at a checkpoint outside Idlib.

The news agency said the head of the Arab League's monitoring mission released a statement saying over the last three days violence had risen "in a significant way" especially in Homs, Hama and Idlib.

More from GlobalPost: UN Security Council considers next steps for Syria

Seeking to put an end to the violence, the UN Security Council held a closed-doors meeting on a new European-Arab draft resolution. The council will likely vote on the measure next week but Russia has expressed disappointment with any measure that would use foreign military intervention.