Syrian government tries to regain control of country's east after a car bomb kills five
Three policemen were among the dead in the attack near a security compound in the city of Al Mayadin, official media said.
The bombing undermines efforts by the government to stabilise Syria, work that received a boost when US President Donald Trump met Syrian leader Ahmad Al Shara in Doha last week during his Gulf trip.
The government enforces checkpoints near Al Mayadin and other sites along the Euphrates River Valley in the east as Defence Ministry reinforcements are awaited from central Syria, the sources told The National. Ministry officials also visited the site of the bombing.
Qassem Al Shawa, a technician, told The National that a small security presence in Al Mayadin made the bombing easy. He said that recruitment to new state security forces from militias has been slow, partly as a result of screening volunteers for allegiances that may not be in line with the new leadership in Damascus.
Al Mayadin, Mr Al Shawa said, is also open to the Badiya, the vast desert that stretches to the outskirts of Damascus and the Iraqi border, where ISIS has pockets of activities.
'It is no secret that ISIS has cells in Al Mayadin,' said Mr Al Shawa, who works in the nearby Al Omar oilfield, which is controlled by the US. The government has not blamed any group for the bombing and there has been no claim of responsibility.
It was the second major bombing in government areas since an attack killed 20 people in February near Manbij, in Aleppo governorate. Neither perpetrators nor suspects have been identified.
Al Omar and areas to the north of Al Mayadin, known as Al Jazeera, are within the domain of the Syrian Democratic Forces, a mostly Kurdish militia supported by the US, and ideologically at odds with the government, whose position was secured by Hayat Tahrir Al Sham, an umbrella group of rebel forces that ran the Assad regime out of Syria in December.
On Sunday, an Interior Ministry official told The National that troops have commenced operations to 'eradicate' ISIS from urban centres, after a counter-terrorism raid in Aleppo killed three members of the terrorist group.
A day before meeting Mr Al Shara, Mr Trump said that the US would lift sanctions on Syria, to give the country 'a chance at greatness'. His Secretary of State Marco Rubio said it remains too early to judge whether the new government will succeed in meeting counter-terrorism measures.
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