Car bomb blast in Damascus suburb kills father and daughter

A suspected explosive device planted inside a car in a suburb of Syria's capital, Damascus, has killed at least two people, including a child, and left one other person wounded.

The blast struck on Saturday in Jaramana, on the southeastern edge of the capital. The dead were identified as a man and his daughter, while a third person, said to be the man's wife, suffered serious injuries.

Syria's Internal Security Forces said they sealed off the area and launched an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the explosion.

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

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

Pett said the security situation in the capital remains complex, even though conditions have improved 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. Among them was a double-tap attack in July during a visit by French President Emmanuel Macron, 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 rather members and locations of the security forces, violence that 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, 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, the security forces said they had foiled a plot targeting a police patrol in the Damascus countryside, telling Syrian state television that an ISIL cell was preparing the attack. The group was also accused of responsibility for explosions and assassinations in Raqqa, Aleppo, Idlib and Homs.