Powerful car bomb rocks Hezbollah stronghold in Beirut

A powerful explosion in Shia group Hezbollah's southern Beirut stronghold has killed at least five people and wounded 60.

Television footage showed twisted and blackened remains of several cars being doused with hoses by emergency services. The blast also tore off the facades of several nearby buildings in the Haret Hreik neighbourhood.

Ambulances are at the scene. The number of the injured is expected to increase.

Analysts say the car bomb is not one of the biggest of the recent incidents but its impact was considerable because it was detonated during rush hour.

Beirut has been hit by a series of bombs in recent weeks. Last week, a terrorist attack in Beirut left Mohamad Chatah, the former Minister of Finance of Lebanon, and several others dead.

Chatah, a close aide of ex-prime minister Saad Hariri and a Sunni Muslim who was a vocal critic of Syria and Hezbollah, was killed along with at least seven others in a blast on Friday that shook the capital Beirut.

Also, in November 25 suicide bombers at the Iranian embassy killed people while explosions have also hit other nearby Hezbollah districts and Sunni mosques.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but it came a day after Majid alMajid, the head of a Sunni jihadist group which claimed a suicide bomb attack on the Iranian embassy in Beirut in November, was reportedly arrested.

Majid al-Majid, the Saudi "emir" of the al-Qaeda-linked Abdullah Azzam Brigades, had said that attacks would continue in Lebanon until Iranian and Hezbollah forces stopped fighting alongside government forces in Syria.

Hezbollah has sent its fighters to Syria to join the forces of President Bashar al-Assad while Sunni Muslim fighters have gone Syria to fight for the Syrian rebels.