Bomb explodes north of Beirut, killing two, wounding one

Aug 11, 2011, 11:13 GMT

Beirut - A blast near a commercial area in a Christian neighborhood, north of Beirut, on Thursday killed two people and wounded another, police said.

The bomb which exploded in the Antelias area, 15 kilometers north of the Lebanese capital, caused material damage and destroyed several cars, they said.

Two people were killed instantly and a third was rushed to hospital with serious injuries, police said.

Investigators at the scene told the German press Agency dpa the two were killed while trying to plant the bomb near a car in a commercial parking lot as it exploded in their hands.

The two men were identified as Ihsan Dia and Hassan Nassar, from Beirut's southern suburbs, a stronghold of the Shiite Hezbollah movement, a Lebanese security source at the scene told dpa.

An eyewitness at the scene said he saw two men emerging from a white van and then heard the explosion.

The white van was still in the parking lot and Lebanese investigators were taking fingerprints inside the vehicle.

A pool of blood could be seen on the ground near the van and some damaged cars had blood stains and human flesh on their windows.

People living near the explosion site seemed shocked and expressed fears that Lebanon might experience a new wave of explosions similar to the one that took place between 2005-2008 and that targeted anti-Syrian journalists and politicians.

'This explosion was meant to cause panic and fear in the country, but luckily we think, as we are hearing until now, that the two men who were planting it were killed due to a malfunction with the bomb,' George Ghantous, who lives near where the blast took place, told dpa.

Earlier a security source told