BEIRUT, Lebanon — Frustrated by the Syrian government's intransigence and the Arab League's delays in penalizing President Bashar al-Assad, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators in Syria took to the streets on Friday over the violent repression of their nine-month-old uprising.
The demonstrations, reported by rights activists and opposition groups, convulsed several regions as Mr. Assad faced what appeared to be an unexpected source of new diplomatic pressure, from Russia, one of his most loyal allies. On Thursday, Russia's ambassador to the United Nations proposed a surprise Security Council resolution that called on all antagonists in the Syrian conflict to stop the violence and begin negotiations.
While the Russian draft resolution does not call for sanctions and its prospects for passage are unclear, political analysts said it reflected new concern in Moscow that Mr. Assad's grip on power is at risk, which also could jeopardize Russia's influence.
Activists and opposition groups reported that at least 17 people in Syria, including two minors and three women, were killed in confrontations with security forces during the Friday protests.
Some activists said the street demonstrators were energized by anger over the 22-member Arab League's repeated postponements in imposing unprecedented economic sanctions on Mr. Assad's government, which the league had promised nearly three weeks ago. A meeting of Arab League foreign ministers on Syria, which was to take place this weekend in Cairo, was indefinitely delayed on Thursday.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition group in London with networks of informants in Syria, said that at least 200,000 people went out in the city of Homs after Friday Prayer and called for the Arab League to interfere more aggressively to end bloodshed that, by the United Nations' count, has killed more than 5,000 people.
Salim Qabbani, a Syrian activist with the Local Coordination Committees, an opposition group that helps organize and document protests, said that three people were killed in the southern province of Dara'a, where the uprising erupted in March; nine were killed in Homs; and three in Hama. Both Homs and Hama, in central Syria, have been roiled by almost daily clashes between troops and army defectors in recent weeks. Two people were also reported killed in the suburbs of the capital, Damascus.
"There were protests from Dara'a to Qamishli today," said Mr. Qabbani, who was reached by phone. Qamishli is in a largely Kurdish region in northeastern Syria, near the Turkish border. "Over 70,000 went out in Dara'a alone," he said.
It was impossible to confirm independently the number of deaths or the size of the crowds, as Syria rarely lets in foreign media to cover the unrest.
Although Russia's draft Security Council resolution criticized the Assad government as well as his adversaries, opposition leaders in Syria were reluctant to conclude that Russia had made an important shift.
The Kremlin, which has supported the Assad family's grip on power for decades, has consistently blocked any move by Western countries to impose Security Council sanctions on Syria, wary of the sanctions imposed on Libya early this year that opened the way for an armed intervention by NATO forces and the toppling of Libya's longtime autocratic ruler, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.
At the same time, it has been difficult for Russia to ignore the daily reports of killings coming out of Syria.
"It is a small shift in Russia's position, but not a substantial change," said Samir Nachar, a member of the Syrian National Council, a leading opposition group. "The proposal came due to the international pressure practiced by human rights organizations, which made Russia seem like a partner in the Syrian regime's crimes."
The new resolution could still offer a possible way out of the deadlock that the 15-nation Security Council has faced in passing a resolution over Mr. Assad's crackdown. In October, Russia and China vetoed a resolution on Syria drafted by European countries, in a step that seemed to embolden Mr. Assad's government.
Russia's ambassador to the United Nations, Vitaly Churkin, told reporters that the draft resolution "considerably strengthens all aspects of the previous text."
"Clearly, the Syrian authorities are singled out in a number of instances," he added.
Western officials familiar with the Russian draft said that they were pleasantly surprised, although they said it would need amendments to gain wider acceptance. They said it called for an end to the violence, a ban on arms sales to protesters, but not to the government, a reaffirmation of the sovereignty of Syria and no foreign intervention. They described it as largely symbolic without any punitive measures.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told reporters in Washington that the United States would study the text carefully and that it would have to be reviewed by the Arab League.
"And hopefully, we can work with the Russians, who — for the first time, at least — are recognizing that this is a matter that needs to go to the Security Council," she said.
Political analysts suggested that Russia's Syria resolution also was driven in part by fears that it is losing any ability to shape the outcomes of the Arab Spring uprisings. They said the Kremlin is concerned that Turkey and the Arab League, which once stood by Mr. Assad, have now bitterly abandoned him and may even feel pressured to intervene militarily in Syria in the future.
"The Russians have got the sense that momentum is building against Syria and they want to get ahead of the game," said Fiona Hill, a Russia expert and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Behind the scenes, she said, "Russia fears it is losing the edge in the Middle East. This is really kind of their last chance to stake out some influence."
Steven Lee Myers contributed reporting from Washington, Rick Gladstone from New York and an employee of The New York Times from Beirut.