Homs has reportedly been a focal point of recent crackdown by the governmentA group of 50 Arab League observers has flown into Syria as part of a regional plan to end fighting which the UN says has left more than 5,000 people dead.
Ahead of their arrival, gunfire and shelling in the volatile city of Homs claimed 23 lives, the opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Opposition activists have urged the monitors to visit Homs.
Protests against President Bashar al-Assad began in March. The government says it is fighting armed gangs.
Casualty figures are hard to verify as most foreign media are banned from reporting in Syria.
The latest bloodshed is reported to have taken place largely in the Baba Amr district of Homs. The Observatory, which is based in London, says that area alone saw 15 deaths on Monday.
A number of people have been killed in the city by mortar shelling and machine gun fire over the last few days, activists say.
One resident told the BBC in a telephone call that the city was surrounded and many buildings had been destroyed.
"Some of us are trying to reach the destroyed buildings to search for survivors. In the middle of the day we can't reach them because there are snipers all around," he said.
"They are going to kill all of us, all the civilian people here in Baba Amr."
Graphic footage purporting to show the aftermath of heavy shelling in Baba Amr has been posted on the internet.
It shows the bleeding corpses of four young men and a woman screaming for help from the international community.
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Analysis
Jim MuirBBC News, BeirutThe mission is getting under way in earnest now. Syria has said it is responsible for the security of the Arab observers, so it remains to be seen how free their access to trouble spots will be.
The head of the Arab League, Nabil al-Arabi, has said it will take about a week to judge whether Syria really is complying with the agreement it signed, under which the observers are to monitor a complete halt to the violence, the withdrawal of armed forces, and the release of all detainees, of whom there are many thousands.
In advance of the observers' arrival, activists accused the authorities of moving detainees onto military bases - where the observers are not allowed to go - and also of removing hundreds of bodies of killed protesters from the morgue at Homs.Freedom of movement
News agencies reported that 50 monitors and 10 officials from the Arab League secretariat had flown in from Cairo - several days after a nine-member advance team arrived in Damascus.
Their mission is to assess an Arab League initiative agreed with the Syrian government requiring all armed forces to withdraw from areas of conflict.
Damascus has pledged to allow the monitors full freedom of movement. But the observers will have to depend on the regime to provide security.
Asked whether they could go to Homs, Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi said:
"They are here to monitor the violence from any side. So if the violence in Homs is generated by armed elements, yes they can. In general they can go anywhere but in co-ordination with the Syrian side."
The BBC's Jim Muir in neighbouring Lebanon says Homs may well prove to be a test case for the observer mission in terms of ascertaining whether they truly have unrestricted access and whether there is any peace for them to monitor.Graphic footage
One of the advance party, head of mission General Mustafa Dabi of Sudan, earlier told Reuters news agency: "Our Syrian brothers are co-operating very well and without any restrictions so far."
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Syria deaths
More than 5,000 civilians have been killed
UN denied access to Syria
Information gathered from NGOs, sources in Syria and Syrian nationals who have fled
The death toll is compiled as a list of names which the UN cross-references
Vast majority of casualties were unarmed, but the figure may include armed defectors
Tally does not include serving members of the security forces
Source: UN's OHCHR
The observer mission will eventually have up to 200 members, and it plans to meet both government officials and the opposition.
On Sunday, the opposition Syrian National Council (SNC), the main umbrella group of Assad opponents, urged monitors to go to Homs, "specifically to the besieged neighbourhoods, to fulfil their stated mission".
On Friday, two suicide car bombings in Damascus killed 44 people and left more than 150 injured, Syrian officials said. They blamed al-Qaeda, but the opposition suggested security forces were behind the blasts.
With a solid security presence, Damascus had largely escaped the violence and protests that have flared in central and northern provinces, although there have been protests in suburbs.
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem has said he expects the monitors to back the government's claim that armed gangs were behind the continuing violence.
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