Handout / AFP - Getty Images

A handout picture released by the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) shows Syrian firefighters dousing a burning truck at the site of a blast in the eastern city of Deir Zor Saturday.

A car bomb in the Syrian city of Deir al-Zor killed nine people and wounded about 100 Saturday, the official SANA news agency said.

It said the bombing was carried out by a suicide bomber and that the dead included guards at a military installation which is near a housing complex, according to Reuters.

Syrian state television showed damaged, burning buildings and vehicles after the blast and black smoke could be seen rising above the city, BBC News reported.

The BBC said the explosion was the latest in a series of blasts that were thought to be al-Qaida operations.

On Thursday, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he believed al-Qaida was responsible for two suicide car bombs that killed at least 55 people in Syria a week ago.

Inside Syria rebel stronghold: 'The city is on mute'

He also said that the death toll in the country's 14-month conflict was now at least 10,000.

A message to Assad? War games held near border

"A few days ago there was a huge, serious, massive terrorist attack. I believe that there must be al-Qaida behind it. This has created again very serious problems," Ban told a youth event at U.N. headquarters in New York, Reuters reported. 

Reuters contributed to this report.

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NBC News

A United Nations convoy makes its way through Douma, Syria, on Tuesday.

DOUMA, Syria -- Surrounded by ancient olive groves, Douma is just ten miles from Damascus but it feels like another world. It is a city under occupation. 

In Damascus, vehicles slow to a halt due to traffic jams. In Douma, there is no traffic. Only a few empty cars are parked on the roadside. 

Shoppers crowd the capital's sidewalks and restaurants do a brisk business. But in neighboring Douma, sidewalks are empty and most of the shops are shuttered with corrugated metal sheets or padlocked steel doors. 

NBC's Ayman Mohyeldin answers Syria questions

A few people walk quickly down the empty streets on what must be only the most necessary of errands. They stare straight ahead or look down as they walk. 

Except for the noise of our three-vehicle convoy speeding through town, there is silence. 

On Tuesday, we drove behind two vans of United Nations observers on a mission to Douma and Harasta to monitor the cease-fire. 

Both cities have been bastions of resistance against the regime where residents stage flash demonstrations even after months of brutal crackdowns. 

Report: Syria rebels get better weapons as US boosts support

However, there isn't much of a cease-fire left to monitor. Syria is wracked by mounting violence and the U.N. teams have been caught up in two explosions and a shooting. 

So it's no surprise they speed down the streets and get out of their vans only twice in violence-prone Douma.

Some residents seem worried that the U.N. presence will spur attacks. A man standing with his little daughter and son pulls the girl inside and yanks his unwilling and crying son behind the metal door of his house as we pass. He slams the door shut.

A message to Assad? War games held miles from Syria border

Our driver points out snipers in the tall building in front of us. 

Every few blocks we pass through military checkpoints, with armed troops behind sand-bagged barricades.

Little interaction
Led by a Moroccan, the U.N. monitors stop briefly at checkpoints to ask Syrian security if there has been any violence. A U.N. 'blue cap' shakes hands with a tiny child in a car stopped at a checkpoint. Otherwise, we do not see the U.N. interact with or talk to civilians.

They get out of their vans at a main checkpoint and the team leader waves us away as he goes to talk with a plainclothes officer in private. As we wait, police, soldiers and plainclothes security look nervously around. 

A soldier explains why they are on edge. "They shoot at us from here and there," he says as he points to neighboring buildings.

He claims the opposition still manages to evade the tight security cordon to spirit in weapons and ammunition. But the military shoots back. 

Syria violence spills into streets of Lebanon's Tripoli

According to activists, a civilian was killed in Douma the day we visited and YouTube video which NBC News cannot verify later showed snipers shooting randomly at the city's streets.      

We cross into Harasta, a much livelier town. It is market day. A few shoppers check out vegetables heaped on trays. 

We jostle for position with other cars. Some stores are open and a few shoppers buy bread from a functioning bakery.

Oddly, the town is still silent. There is no chatter or laughter as people go about their business. 

It is as if the city is on mute. 

We pass back through the tense quiet of Douma on our way to the main highway to Damascus. 

We are rejoined by a car full of Syrian intelligence and three carloads of journalists from pro-regime Syrian TV and Al Dunya TV who accompanied us to Douma. They had elected to wait outside the city, unwilling to risk the anger of local residents. 

Our visit, however fleeting, revealed a part of Syria normally seen only in grainy activist video.

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Syria has been locked in a violent conflict between President Bashar Assad’s regime and civilian forces for over 14 months. The Assad regime’s crackdown on the popular uprising has left thousands dead and prompted international condemnation.  More than 200 U.N. observers are currently in Syria to monitor a cease-fire agreement which has been repeatedly violated by both sides since it took effect in April.

Report: Syria rebels get better weapons as US quietly boosts support

NBC News’ Ayman Mohyeldin is in Syria to report on the latest developments in the ongoing conflict. Ask him your questions during a LIVE Chat beginning at 2:30 p.m. ET. 

This chat will be moderated. As many questions as possible will be answered. 

Fadi Zaidan / AP

In this Monday, May 14, photo, a girl walks past Syrian rebels at Khaldiyeh neighborhood in Homs province, central Syria.

Updated at 1 p.m. ET: Syrian rebels battling President Bashar al-Assad's government are getting more and better weapons in an effort paid for by Persian Gulf nations and coordinated partly by the United States, the Washington Post reported late on Tuesday.

The report cited opposition activists and U.S. and foreign officials.

Obama administration officials emphasized the United States is not supplying or funding the lethal material, which includes anti-tank weapons, the report said.

Instead, they said, the administration has expanded contacts with opposition military forces to provide the Gulf nations with assessments of rebel credibility and command-and-control infrastructure, the Post said.

Syria violence spills into streets of Lebanon's Tripoli

"We are increasing our non-lethal assistance to the Syrian opposition, and we continue to coordinate our efforts with friends and allies in the region and beyond in order to have the biggest impact on what we are collectively doing," said a senior State Department official, one of several U.S. and foreign government officials who discussed the evolving effort on condition of anonymity, the Post reported.

Syria says dozens dead in twin Damascus blasts

U.S. contacts with the rebels and the information-sharing with Gulf nations mark a shift in Obama administration policy as hopes dim for a political solution to the Syrian crisis, the Post said.

Opposition activists speaking to the newspaper said that the flow of weapons increased significantly after Saudi Arabia, Qatar and others boosted the amount of money they would spend on the rebels.

Weapons and other material was being stockpiled in Damascus, near the Turkish border in Idlib and Zabadani near Lebanon, according to the Post.

The Muslim Brotherhood in Syria claimed to have opened its own supply channel, Mulham al-Drobi, a member of the Brotherhood’s executive committee, told the newspaper. 

U.K.-based Syrian opposition activist Abdul Wahab Omar said he would welcome increased supplies to the rebels' Free Syrian Army, but said he had not heard this was happening.

“The (Free Syria Army) remains in my eyes as powerful, no more no less, as it was two months ago,” he told msnbc.com. “I haven’t seen any reports of new kinds of equipment on the ground.  I have heard what I’m used to hearing so far – the rebels continue to be in the position where they cannot yet pose a significant threat to the Assad regime.”

Any indications that there were more weapons were likely due to the relative lull in activity, which meant that stockpiles weren’t being depleted as quickly, he added.

 Reuters contributed to this report. 

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U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon "strongly condemned" two suicide car bombings in Syria Thursday, calling for an end to armed violence on all sides.

"The secretary-general strongly condemns today's attacks in Damascus," Ban's spokesman Martin Nesirky told reporters, according to Reuters.

Photoblog: Twin Damascus blasts

"It's an urgent call from him on all sides fully to comply with their obligations to cease armed violence in all its forms, and to protect civilians, as well as to distance themselves from indiscriminate bombings and other terrorist attacks," he said.

Fifty-five people were killed and 372 were wounded when two cars exploded in Damascus earlier on Thursday, Syrian state media said.

Syria's foreign ministry said the bombing was a sign the country is facing foreign-backed terrorism and called on the United Nations Security Council to take measures against countries or groups supporting violence in the revolt against President Bashar Assad.

Syria suicide bombers kill 55, truce in tatters

"Syria stresses the importance of the UNSC taking measures against countries, groups and news agencies that are practicing and encouraging terrorism," the state news agency SANA quoted the ministry as saying in a letter addressed to the Security Council.

The uprising against Assad began 14 months ago, and the United Nations reported at least 9,000 people have died.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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A Syrian official checks the identification of individuals before they vote in the parliamentary elections at a polling station in Damascus on Monday.

Updated at 11:30 a.m. ET: Polls opened in what Syria's government said were its first multiparty elections in about 50 years on Monday, after renewed fighting between rebels and President Bashar Assad's forces reportedly broke out in an oil-producing part of the country.

The opposition have said the election will change little in a rubber-stamp assembly that has been chosen by the Assad family, backed by the powerful secret police, for the past four decades. 

The voting for Syria's 250 member parliament is unlikely to affect the course of Syria's popular uprising, which began 13 months ago with anti-Assad protests. The regime has violently cracked down on dissent and many in the opposition have armed themselves, pushing the country toward civil war.

Polls opened at 7 a.m. and Syrian state TV showed voters lining up and dropping white ballots in large, plastic boxes. Election officials say more than 7,000 candidates are competing seats in the legislature in a country of almost 15 million eligible voters out of a population of 24 million.

The elections are the first under a new constitution, adopted three months ago. The charter for the first time allows the formation of political parties to compete with Assad's ruling Baath party and limits the president to two seven-year terms.

Some members of the opposition remained skeptical.

"Syria's political system remains utterly corrupt and election results will be again determined in advance," opposition activist Bassam Ishaq, who unsuccessfully ran for parliament in 2003 and 2007, told Reuters.  "There are effectively very few seats for independents, and these will go to the highest bidder."

Significant and important members of the opposition were also not able to participate in the elections, Abdulwahab Sayed-Omar, spokesman for British Solidarity for Syria, told msnbc.com.

"Arguably the most prominent political opposition group is the Muslim Brotherhood," he said. "(But) not only is it banned and illegal, but people who support it get the death penalty."

Bashar al-Haraki, a member of opposition Syrian National Council, told the BBC the elections were a "farce which an be added to the regime's masquerade."

While the opposition have dismissed the vote as a sham, authorities say they are fighting foreign-backed terrorists who are bent on sabotaging what state media describe as a reform program that is more advanced than in Western democracies.

Backed by old ally Russia, and with support from Iran's clerical Shiite rulers, Assad, who belongs to Syria's Alawite minority, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, has relied on the Alawite-dominated military to try to put down the uprising against his repressive rule. 

Unlike the autocratic leaders of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, who have been toppled by Arab Spring revolts, Assad has retained enough support among the military and among his Alawite sect, which dominates the army and security apparatus, to withstand the popular revolt. 

Population 'trapped'
Rebels armed with rocket-propelled grenades attacked tank positions in the east of the provincial capital Deir al-Zor on Sunday, in response to an army offensive against towns and villages in the tribal area bordering Iraq that has killed tens of people and stopped others reaching supplies and medical care, they said. 

"We do not have a death toll because no one is daring to go into the streets," Ghaith Abdelsalam, an opposition activist who lives near Ghassan Abboud roundabout that has become a flash-point for the fighting in the city, told Reuters. 

"The population has been trapped and anger has been building up," he said, adding the fighting subsided in the morning after erupting overnight. 

The army still has tanks and heavy weapons in cities and towns and rebels are continuing their attacks on military convoys and army roadblocks that have cut off swathes of the country, according to witnesses and opposition sources, both sides in violation of ceasefire being monitored by a U.N. team.

Bold move as Syria leader makes time for chess

Fifty out of a planned total of 300 U.N. observers are now in Syria to monitor the ceasefire declared on April 12, but their presence has not halted 14 months of violence. The United Nations says 9,000 have been killed during the crackdown.

The Syrian Network for Human Rights, an opposition organisation that documents the violence, said Assad's forces killed three people on Sunday, including Ali Arnous, a young man in the town of Tel north of Damascus. 

A YouTube video showed thousands of people marching at Arnous's funeral, chanting "Raise your head high, father of the martyr," and carrying a huge green Syrian flag from the era before Assad's Baath Party seized power in a 1963 coup. 

A grave containing the bodies of six other people the network said were killed by Assad's forces was discovered in Oram al-Joz, one of dozens of towns and villages in Idlib, which has been overrun by the military in the past few months. 

Footage and accounts by activists are hard to verify conclusively because the government restricts media access. 

Also on Sunday, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan told Syrian refugees on Sunday that victory for the rebels was not far off and that Assad was "losing blood" by the day. 

Erdogan, who is trying to rally international support against Assad, was met with enthusiastic applause and shouts of "Long live Erodgan" at the Kilis camp on Turkey's border with Syria, which is sheltering 9,000 refugees from the violence. 

"Your victory is not far. We have just one issue: to stop the bloodshed and tears and for the Syrian people's demands to be met," he told the crowd. 

Reuters, The Associated Press and msnbc.com staff contributed to this report. 

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