The BBC's Paul Wood, who travelled without permission to Syria's flashpoint city of Homs, reports that he saw a small but steady stream of defectors from the official security forces.
Until recently, most of the bloodshed was caused by security forces firing on mainly peaceful protesters - but there have been growing reports of army defectors and armed civilians fighting government forces
I feel very sorry for the one or two North Korean defectors who were caught by Chinese police while entering South Korean or foreign embassies in Beijing, but their arrest drew the whole attention of the world. Kim Y. Sam
