A war monitor says that clashes between Syrian security forces and gunmen loyal to former President Bashar Assad in the country’s coastal region have left more than 70 people dead and the area outside

More than 1,000 have died since Thursday amid fighting between Syrian government forces and supporters of former President Bashar al-Assad, a monitoring organization announced.

Hundreds of civilians have been killed in Syria in the last 48 hours, according to a war monitoring group, in the deadliest eruption of violence since the fall of the Al-Assad regime in December.

A Syrian war monitor says the death toll from two days of clashes between security forces and loyalists to ousted Syrian President Bashar Assad and revenge killings that followed has risen to more tha

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said more than 700 civilians had been killed in 48 hours.

Fierce clashes over the past two days between security forces under Syria’s new Islamist government and gunmen belonging to the country’s Alawite religious minority killed scores of people, marking the most widespread violence since the fall of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

International alarm is growing over fighting in western Syria, where hundreds of civilians have been reportedly killed amid intense clashes.