Car Bomb in Jaramana Near Damascus Kills Father and Child, Seriously Wounds Wife

A blast from a suspected explosive device planted inside a car in Jaramana, on the southeastern edge of Syria's capital Damascus, on Saturday killed at least two people, a man and his daughter.

A third person was seriously injured in the same explosion. She is said to be the wife of the man who was killed.

Syria's Internal Security Forces said they sealed off the area and opened an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the blast, which is being investigated as a suspected bomb attack.

Witnesses described the vehicle as a Kia Rio parked between two apartment buildings in Jaramana, an area largely considered a quiet residential neighbourhood.

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.

Al Jazeera's Heidi Pett, reporting from the blast scene, said the security situation in the capital remains complex, despite improvements since the regime of former President Bashar al-Assad fell two years ago.

Pett said there were two very high-profile incidents in the last couple of months, 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).

The other was a deadly attack on what is known as the Lawyer's Cafe, near the Palace of Justice, which has been the scene of high-profile trials of former members of the Assad regime.

Pett 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, security forces said they foiled a plot to target a police patrol in the Damascus countryside, saying the group was responsible for explosions and assassinations in Raqqa, Aleppo, Idlib and Homs, Syrian state television reported.