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.
Saudi Arabia and Turkey, despite being on opposite sides of Middle Eastern divides, are cooperating in Syria to enable youth and women to acquire skills that would either allow them to compete in the job market or turn them into entrepreneurs.
Syria accidentally shot down a Russian military aircraft, killing all 15 crew members, when its air defences swung into action against an Israeli missile strike, Russian and Israeli forces said yesterday.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad yesterday told his troops they were close to winning the country's seven-year civil war after inflicting a succession of defeats on rebels.
Jordan says 800 people including members of Syria's "White Helmets" civil defence group had been evacuated from southwest Syria where Damascus' forces are advancing against rebels, with Israeli officials saying they facilitated the mission.
Sending Arab troops to Syria is a possibility that is being discussed by officials from various countries, Egypt's foreign minister is quoted as saying.
The civilised world has stopped altogether questioning the legality of military actions of countries mighty and powerful beyond their own borders since the illegal occupation of Iraq by the US and its coalition of the willing (for some countries the entire world is their area of interest, and thus their intentions and actions, they assert, cannot be circumscribed by political boundaries). However, in this instance one might nonetheless ask whether the aim of the air strike on Syrian targets on April 13 by US, Britain and France, would actually meet the stated US objective—deterring Assad.
The United States, British and French forces strike Syria with more than 100 missiles in the first coordinated Western strikes against the Damascus government, targeting what they called chemical weapons sites in retaliation for a poison gas attack.
President Donald Trump says today that an attack on Syria could take place “very soon or not so soon at all,” arguing he had never signaled the timing of retaliation for a suspected chemical weapons attack that he had suggested was imminent a day earlier.
Turkey suffers heavy losses during its offensive against a Kurdish militia in northwest Syria, with the military announcing that eight soldiers are killed and 13 more wounded.
North Korea sends items used in ballistic missile and chemical weapons programs to Syria along with missile technicians in violation of UN sanctions — and banned ballistic missiles systems to Myanmar, UN experts say.
