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Car bomb rocks south Beirut suburbs | Car bomb rocks south Beirut suburbs |
(about 1 hour later) | |
A car bomb has wounded dozens of people in a stronghold of Lebanon's Shia militant group Hezbollah in Beirut. | |
A Red Cross official told the BBC that 37 people had been hurt in the blast, in the Beir el-Abed area. | |
TV pictures showed vehicles on fire and a cloud of black smoke. No group has said it was behind the attack. | TV pictures showed vehicles on fire and a cloud of black smoke. No group has said it was behind the attack. |
Rebels in neighbouring Syria have threatened to target Hezbollah, which intervened in the fighting there to support President Bashar al-Assad. | Rebels in neighbouring Syria have threatened to target Hezbollah, which intervened in the fighting there to support President Bashar al-Assad. |
Two rockets hit south Beirut in May. | Two rockets hit south Beirut in May. |
Tuesday's explosion in the city's southern suburbs took place in a car park near an Islamic centre; no-one was in the car at the time. | |
Dramatic footage broadcast by Hezbollah-run al-Manar TV showed firefighters trying to put out the flames. | |
The BBC's Dima Hamdan, reporting from the scene, described considerable damage to nearby buildings. Many shops were forced to close as their windows were shattered, she said. | |
'Message' | 'Message' |
Visiting the site of the blast, Lebanese Interior Minister Marwan Charbel said the explosion was meant to create a bigger schism between Sunni and Shia, but insisted that would not happen. | |
He was greeted by angry crowds, our correspondent says. | |
"This is a message, but we will not bow," Hezbollah official Ziad Waked told al-Manar, AP reports. | "This is a message, but we will not bow," Hezbollah official Ziad Waked told al-Manar, AP reports. |
A Hezbollah MP told the BBC that it was too early to speculate on who was responsible for the bomb. | A Hezbollah MP told the BBC that it was too early to speculate on who was responsible for the bomb. |
Fighters from the militant group were instrumental in a strategic victory by Syrian government forces in Qusair, close to the border with Lebanon, in early June. | |
Events in Syria are putting Lebanon's fragile peace in jeopardy, correspondents say, threatening the equilibrium which has held since the end of the civil war over 20 years ago. |