( CNN ) -- From a distance , he appears to be taking a nap . His long , delicate eyelashes are closed as his head rests on a blanket . The 10-year-old boy , however , is not asleep . The turn of his gauze-wrapped head reveals a mass of blood . Maher al-Husseini is dead , reportedly from a sniper bullet . He bled to death . In his own home . `` What is the fault of this child ? '' asks a man , whose voice rises in anger on a video posted Friday on YouTube . He kneels down and gestures to the boy , whose hands and ankles are tied . `` What did this child do that they hit him inside his house ? This is unacceptable . '' Friday was a day of protest , pain and sorrow in Homs , a center of demonstrations and death in Syria . At least 17 people were reported slain in the city , according to the Local Coordination Committees of Syria , an activist group . Women , children and dissident soldiers were among those killed Friday in Syria , the group said . The United Nations said last week that more than 4,000 people have died in Syria since a brutal government crackdown against protesters erupted in mid-March . The unidentified narrator of the video starts the tour of the home upstairs , pointing to a bullet hole on a window frame , then blood on the chair beneath it . He leads the cameraman down blood-spattered stairs to the body of Maher , lying in the family sitting room . The boy wears a maroon sweatshirt featuring a comic character . `` We could not aid the child , we did not know where to take him because of the firing in the neighborhood , '' the agitated man said . `` He kept bleeding for half an hour and we could not aid him . '' The speaker blamed Maher 's death on `` thugs '' who fired upon the home in the Mreiji neighborhood . Another man sits in a chair , his head in his hands . `` We are not safe , this government is murderous , '' the narrator says . `` It is killing people , it is killing its own people . '' Near the end of the video , the man leans down and kisses the boy . Watch the YouTube video . WARNING : Graphic content . A longer version of the video shows a woman crying over the boy . Others can be heard in background wailing . The boy is wrapped in a white sheet and carried by men in street towards a cemetery . Some of the men chant `` The martyrs blood will not be lost in vain , '' as the lifeless boy is carried . As the men walk towards the cemetery gunfire can be heard . They get to the cemetery and start digging as gunfire continues to ring out . Another video posted on YouTube features another scene from Homs , a city wracked by eight months of violence . Three shrouded bodies are being carried into a mosque to be laid out alongside Friday worshippers . One is of a boy identified as Nasser Mohammed , 12 . A chorus of voices rises as they are brought in . Some shout `` Allahu Akbar ! '' ( Allah is the greatest ) . CNN could not independently confirm what was depicted in the videos . Western networks are not allowed inside the embattled country . Out on the streets Friday , Syrian tanks rolled past the wreckage of past confrontations and gunfire echoed . The street battles and demonstrations come as the United Nations and the Arab League continue to press the government of President Bashar al-Assad to allow monitors or observers on the ground . The regime continues to resist those calls -- as it maintains the conflict is with armed terrorists and its own security forces and supporters are the victims . In a rare interview this week with a U.S. television network , al-Assad said he is not responsible for the crackdown . The nation 's military forces `` are not my forces , '' al-Assad told ABC 's Barbara Walters . CNN 's Jim Clancy reported from Beirut , Lebanon .
An agitated man describes the death of a boy in Homs . `` What is the fault of this child ? '' he asks , speaking to a camera . The boy , 10 , was allegedly at home when he was apparently struck by bullet . At least 17 died in Homs , activists say .