<p>A car bomb on Tuesday killed five people, mostly local police, on the outskirts of the Turkish-controlled town of Al-Bab in northern Syria, a war monitor said.</p>.<p>The explosion, which targeted a police station, killed a police chief from another district, two officers and two civilians, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.</p>.<p>It also wounded 19 others, the monitor added.</p>.<p>There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the car bombing, but there has been a string of attacks in Al-Bab since its capture by Turkish troops from the Islamic State group in 2017.</p>.<p>Observatory head Rami Abdul Rahman said it was "likely that sleeper cells of the Islamic State group" were behind the attack.</p>.<p>Turkey and its Syrian proxies control several pockets of territory on Syria's side of the border following three military incursions since 2016.</p>.<p>Al-Bab, 40 kilometres (25 miles) northeast of Syria's second city Aleppo, was one of the western-most strongholds of the jihadists' self-styled "caliphate".</p>.<p>US-backed Kurdish forces seized the last scrap of that territorial proto-state from the jihadists in eastern Syria in March last year.</p>.<p>But the jihadist group continues to carry out attacks through a network of sleeper cells operating in some regions it used to control.</p>.<p>Syria's civil war has killed more than 380,000 people since it started with the repression of anti-government protests in 2011.</p>
<p>A car bomb on Tuesday killed five people, mostly local police, on the outskirts of the Turkish-controlled town of Al-Bab in northern Syria, a war monitor said.</p>.<p>The explosion, which targeted a police station, killed a police chief from another district, two officers and two civilians, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.</p>.<p>It also wounded 19 others, the monitor added.</p>.<p>There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the car bombing, but there has been a string of attacks in Al-Bab since its capture by Turkish troops from the Islamic State group in 2017.</p>.<p>Observatory head Rami Abdul Rahman said it was "likely that sleeper cells of the Islamic State group" were behind the attack.</p>.<p>Turkey and its Syrian proxies control several pockets of territory on Syria's side of the border following three military incursions since 2016.</p>.<p>Al-Bab, 40 kilometres (25 miles) northeast of Syria's second city Aleppo, was one of the western-most strongholds of the jihadists' self-styled "caliphate".</p>.<p>US-backed Kurdish forces seized the last scrap of that territorial proto-state from the jihadists in eastern Syria in March last year.</p>.<p>But the jihadist group continues to carry out attacks through a network of sleeper cells operating in some regions it used to control.</p>.<p>Syria's civil war has killed more than 380,000 people since it started with the repression of anti-government protests in 2011.</p>