Syria's new authorities under interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa have sought to disband armed groups
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor has reported that 745 Alawite civilians were killed in Latakia and Tartus provinces.
Syrian authorities said the violence began when remnants loyal to Assad launched a deadly and well-planned attack on their forces on Thursday.
There were no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.
Sharaa was appointed Wednesday to lead Syria for an unspecified transitional period
No group has claimed the four activists' abduction and they have not been heard from since.
Ankara-backed rebels played a key role in supporting Sharaa's Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which headed a rebel alliance that seized Damascus on December 8, toppling longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad.
The seismic change in Syria is expected to yield deeper Turkish sway just as a change of US administration is raising questions over how long Washington will keep backing the country's Kurdish-led forces.
Assad fled Syria following a lightning offensive spearheaded by the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), more than 13 years after his crackdown on democracy protests precipitated one of the deadliest wars of the century.
40 militants with the so-called Islamic State are killed in air strikes in Syria, a British-based monitoring group reports.
Eighty-four Church of England bishops reveal that they wrote to David Cameron last month urging him to accept at least 50,000 refugees from Syria.
EU states have approved an action plan for Turkey that it is hoped will ease the flow of migrants to Europe.
European leaders are to discuss measures to ease the region's migration crisis, with Turkey the focus of their efforts in Brussels.
The fortunes of President Bashar al-Assad, and the possibility of peace in the region, have suffered many setbacks, and they face so ...
Hillary Clinton attacks her main rival Bernie Sanders on gun laws at the Democratic presidential debate.
Kurdish forces have carried out a wave of forced displacement and mass house demolitions - amounting to war crimes - in northern Syria, a rights group says.
The US military has delivered more than 45 tonnes of ammunition to rebels fighting the jihadist group Islamic State (IS) in north-eastern Syria.
Russia's air force hit 60 Islamic State targets in Syria over the past 24 hours and killed around 300 militants, the Defense Ministry says.
Plans to speed up the deportation of failed asylum seekers are to be discussed at a meeting of EU ministers in Luxembourg.
