The worst violence to hit Syria since Bashar al-Assad's ouster poses a major threat to the transition, with mass killings of civilians throwing into doubt the new authorities' ability to govern.
The sectarian violence in the Alawite heartland on Syria's Mediterranean coast has also drawn condemnation from the international community, after 13 years of civil war.
"The militia chaos that we saw in the Alawite coastal cities tells us... that the New Syrian Army is not in control," said Joshua Landis, an expert on Syria at the University of Oklahoma.
The violence, he added, "will hinder (interim president) Ahmed al-Sharaa's efforts to consolidate his rule and to convince the international community that he is in control and can rein in the many militias that are supposed to be under his command".
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Sunday reported hundreds of fighters killed in the clashes between Sharaa's security forces and gunmen loyal to Assad, who is himself a member of the Alawite community.
The war monitor also said security forces and allied groups killed 973 Alawite civilians in the coastal provinces of Latakia and Tartus.
Cycle of violence
Al-Sharaa, who led the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) that spearheaded the lightning offensive that toppled Assad, has called for "national unity (and) civil peace" to be preserved.
"God willing, we will be able to live together in this country," he said.
He also vowed the new authorities would not "allow any foreign powers or domestic parties to drag it (Syria) into chaos or civil war".
HTS has its roots in the Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda and remains proscribed as a terrorist organization by many governments including the United States.
The presidency has announced the creation of an "independent committee" to "investigate the violations against civilians and identify those responsible for them", who would face the courts.
Heiko Wimmen of the International Crisis Group think tank said the latest violence indicated that the new administration "lacks bandwidth to deal with multiple challenges simultaneously".
The coastal region had seen repeated incidents of violence since Assad was toppled, with multiple kidnappings and shootings reported.
Wimmen said that while the latest events "do not yet pose a strategic challenge", they "may have the capacity to entrap the new rulers in a sustained cycle of violence that has the potential to become very destabilizing".
Landis said that Alawite opposition "is not organized or united", but after "indiscriminate killings and widespread looting of Alawite neighborhoods... the situation will harden".
Beyond control
Since coming to power, Sharaa and the new administration have engaged in top-level contacts with foreign powers, pledging repeatedly to protect Syria's ethnic and religious minorities.
But Aron Lund of the Century International think tank said the new government "is weak and hostage to forces beyond its control".
"It needs to play nice with the international community, but it also needs to keep its Islamist base on side," he added.
Western countries, including the United States, condemned the violence, calling on the authorities to put a stop to the killings.
Lund warned that while "the clashes will probably peter out... there's a risk that it will just set the scene for the next escalation".
"The new Damascus leadership has called for restraint and warned against sectarianism, and that's good," he said.
"The problem is that these moderate talking points do not seem to have filtered out far into the ex-rebel factions that are now supposed to function as Syria's army and police."
The new authorities face other security challenges, with the north gripped by fighting between the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces and pro-Turkish factions.
In the south, Druze factions have held fast to their weapons after calls to disarm, and Israel has vowed to protect them.
As Sharaa seeks to placate fears among minorities and the wider world, the killings of civilians on sectarian grounds are only likely to further exacerbate them.
According to Landis, "the Kurds, Druze and other minorities will not trust his words that his government respects all elements of the Syrian people and will treat them equally."
Laure AL KHOURY/AFP
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