The protesters demand that long-time dictator Bashar Assad step down immediately, but his family has held Syria in an iron grip for 40 years, and he is determined to hang on at any price.
Assad has kept most foreign journalists out of the country. CBS News applied for visas six months ago, and on Wednesday, CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer finally gained official access to the closed nation. She saw only what the government wanted her to see, but the brutality and violence was still apparent.
Another group of Western journalists were midway through their own government-supervised tour of the embattled city of Homs when the area came under fire Wednesday.
One French reporter was killed. So were eight Syrians - ordinary residents of this middle class neighborhood. Just 20 minutes earlier, the CBS News crew was on the same street to hear from the people who say the threat of snipers and kidnapping is constant.
CBS News wasn't allowed out of sight of the government minders, but from the bus windows, Homs looked eerily quiet. Armed opposition groups opposed to the regime now control whole neighborhoods, which are off limits to all government vehicles.
Four members of the Syrian army were killed when a bomb exploded in a military bus Wednesday, the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency said. Eight others were injured in the explosion in the Damascus countryside, according to SANA. It blamed the attack on an "armed terrorist group."
Opposition groups blame the violence on al-Assad's government, but the president continues to blame the bloodshed on terrorists.
Al-Assad -- who rarely makes public appearances -- caused quite a stir when he showed up at Wednesday's rally. A news anchor said his presence "caught us off guard, quite surprising."
The Arab League has called on Damascus to stop violence against civilians, free political detainees, remove tanks and weapons from cities and allow outsiders, including the international news media, to travel freely around Syria.
Arab League officials have pledged to add to their 165 observers already in the country. But the group's mission has been met with skepticism from both al-Assad supporters and anti-government activists.
Anwar Malek, an Algerian Arab League observer who withdrew from the monitoring team, told Al-Jazeera he quit because he found himself "serving the regime, and not part of an independent monitoring body.
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