Explosion near Syria’s capital kills father and child

Deadly car bomb blast kills two near Syria's capital

A blast from a suspected explosive device planted inside a car in a suburb of the Syrian capital, Damascus, has killed at least two people, including a child, and wounded one.

The explosion in Jaramana, on the southeastern edge of Damascus, on Saturday killed a man and his daughter, while a third person, said to be the wife of the man, was seriously injured.

Syria’s Internal Security Forces said they sealed off the area and opened an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the blast.

Jaramana is home to a large community of the Druze religious minority and has seen tensions between some Druze members and the Sunni majority backing President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s government.

Witnesses described the vehicle as a Kia Rio parked between two apartment buildings in Jaramana, which is largely considered a quiet residential area, said Al Jazeera’s Heidi Pett, reporting from the blast scene.

Pett said the security situation in the capital remains complex, despite improvements since the regime of former President Bashar al-Assad fell two years ago.

“In the last couple of months, there were two very high-profile incidents,” she said, including a double-tap attack in July during French President Emmanuel Macron’s visit, which Syrian authorities attributed to a cell affiliated with ISIL (ISIS).

“There was also a deadly attack on what’s known as the Lawyer’s Cafe, near the Palace of Justice, which has been the scene of these high-profile trials of former members of the Assad regime,” Pett said.

She added that most of the bombings and security incidents have not necessarily targeted civilians but members and locations of security forces, which authorities have also blamed on ISIL.

Last year, Damascus joined the US-led international coalition against ISIL. The coalition was formed in 2014 and has carried out operations against the group in Syria and Iraq.

On September 27, the security forces said they had arrested four members of an ISIL cell involved in planning and carrying out several attacks in different parts of the country.

Last month, Syria’s security forces said they foiled a plot to target a police patrol in the Damascus countryside, saying an ISIL cell was preparing to carry out the attack, Syrian state television reported.

They said the group was responsible for explosions and assassinations in Raqqa, Aleppo, Idlib and Homs.