A powerful car bomb killed a member of Lebanon's Hizbollah today in an attack the group blamed on Israel.
Witnesses said the blast gouged a gaping hole in the ground in Beirut's southern suburbs, a stronghold of the Iranian- and Syrian-backed Hizbollah, whose forces helped drive Israeli occupation troops out of southern Lebanon in 2000.
The Shi'ite Muslim guerrilla group called the dead man - whom security sources had identified as a Lebanese driver for the Iranian embassy - a martyr and one of its "holy warriors", in accounts of the bombing on the group's television station.
"Hizbollah laments one of its mujahideen," a presenter on al-Manar station said, before reading a statement saying: "Hizbollah mourns Ali Hussein Saleh, who perished in an explosion in his car this morning."
The witnesses said the force of the blast propelled the car about 10 metres and blew its driver to pieces. A passerby, who witnesses and security officials initially thought had been in the car, was badly wounded, security sources said. Security forces cordoned off the area and used bags to collect the dead man's body parts, which the blast had thrown up to the second and third-floor levels of nearby buildings.
Documents retrieved from the car identified the body as that of Saleh, a 42-year-old from the town of Brital in Lebanon's Bekaa valley, a traditional Hizbollah power base.
Hizbollah said in a statement Saleh had joined the group after the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon and had taken part in numerous operations against Israeli occupation.
Hizbollah was quick to point the finger at Israel, saying in a statement: "All information available since this morning proves beyond a doubt complete Israeli responsibility for this heinous crime," it said.
"This crime will not go unpunished."