A car bomb blast in Beirut, Lebanon, kills at least two and injures another 15 people. NBCNews.com's Dara Brown reports.
By NBC News staff and wire reports
Updated at 9:57 a.m. ET: BEIRUT, Lebanon --At least eight people were killed and 78 wounded by a huge blast that exploded in a street in central Beirut on Friday, a security official told NBC News,?raising fears that sectarian violence raging in neighboring Syria had spread to the Lebanese capital.
It was not immediately clear whether the blast had been caused by a car bomb, although all evidence pointed to that, the country's top military judge?Hatem Madi?told NBC News in Beirut.
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It was also not clear if the explosion targeted any political figure in Lebanon's divided community but it occurred at a time of heightened tension between Lebanese factions on opposite sides of the Syria conflict.
Reuters
Huge blast explodes in a central Beirut street injures dozens, kills at least eight.
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Ambulances rushed to the scene in the Ashafriyeh district, a mostly Christian area, as smoke rose from the area.?
Several cars were set on fire by the explosion and the front of a multi-story building was badly damaged. Residents ran about in panic looking for relatives while others helped carry the wounded to ambulances, Reuters reported.?
Pope tells Christians in Beirut: 'Be peacemakers'
Security forces blanketed the area.
Witness Danny Rizkallah told NBC News the blast took place close to the headquarters of a Lebanese opposition political party with links to Syria rebels and close to the scene of the 1982 assassination of then president-elect Bachir Gemayel. The affluent, largely Christian, district is also home to the American University of Science and Technology (AUST).
He said he was having lunch nearby when the blast lifted him from his chair. ?It was an incredibly powerful explosion,? he said. ?I knew immediately it was a bomb because it has such a different sound to shelling.?
Hasan Shaaban / Reuters
Burning cars and damages are seen at the site of an explosion in Ashafriyeh, central Beirut, October 19, 2012.
?I rushed around the corner to see what happened there were lots of people injured by broken glass from the windows of nearby stores. It did a great deal of damage to nearby buildings and there was a lot of glass.
?For this to happen is shocking because we really thought this sort of thing had stopped in Beirut, and for it to happen in the Christian district is also very unusual. I really don?t know who is behind this, or why. Our politics is very messed up.?
The last bombing in Beirut was in 2008 when three people were killed in an explosion that damaged a U.S. diplomatic car.?
Sunni-Shiite tensions
Tension between Sunnis and Shiites has been rumbling in?Lebanon ever since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war but?reignited after the Syria conflict erupted.
It reached its peak when former Prime Minister Rafik?al-Hariri, a Sunni, was killed in 2005. Hariri supporters?accused Syria and then Hezbollah of killing him -- a charge they?both deny. An international tribunal accused several Hezbollah?members of involvement in the murder.
Clashes over Syrian conflict in Lebanon leave ten dead
Hezbollah's political opponents, who have for months accused?it of aiding Assad's forces -- have warned that its involvement?in Syria could ignite sectarian tension of the civil war.?
At least nine people die as Sunni Muslims and Alawites fight for a second day. NBC's Ayman Mohyeldin reports.
However fighting had broken out this year between supporters?and opponents of Assad in the northern city of Tripoli.
Reuters, The Associated Press and NBC News' Paul Nassar contributed to this report.
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