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.
Turkish aid workers have been setting up tents and distributing supplies for thousands of new Syrian refugees kept from entering Turkey at the border.
The number of Syrians trying to cross into Turkey amid an upsurge of fighting in northern Syria has nearly doubled, a Turkish official says.
At least 71 people have died in blasts near the Shia shrine of Sayyida Zeinab, south of Syria's capital Damascus.
Islamic State (IS) has been successful in recruiting quite a few British-Bangladeshi women online, only to serve as sex slaves to the IS men. This report investigates the reasons behind these women running off to war stricken Syria to join the clan.
Sophisticated geometry - branch of mathematics that deals with shapes - has been used at least 1,400 years earlier than previously thought, a study suggests.
Campaigner Malala Yousufzai has called for more to be done to educate millions of refugee Syrian children displaced within Syria and surrounding countries.
Sweden expects to expel up to 80,000 asylum-seekers whose applications have been rejected, its interior minister was quoted as saying.
A team of rescue workers watched as at least 31 refugees drowned in the Aegean Sea fearing being charged with people smuggling.
In April 2013, terrorist group Islamic State announced it would expand its operations beyond Iraq as the civil war in Syria worsened. That same year, a group of Bangladeshi construction workers in Singapore began a closed religious study group to discuss these conflicts that involved Muslims, and whether they should take up arms.
Dozens of people have died in an offensive by so-called Islamic State on government-held areas of Deir al-Zour in eastern Syria, local media say.
