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A powerful car bomb tore through a business district in the centre of the Lebanese capital Beirut, setting cars ablaze and killing a prominent pro-Western politician and five others.
The bomb targeted Mohammed Chatah, a former finance minister and a senior aide to former prime minister Saad Hariri, as he drove through central Beirut.
The Health Ministry said Mr Chatah and five others had died, while more than 70 bystanders were wounded.
Mr Hariri heads the main Western-backed coalition in Lebanon.
It is engaged in bitter feuding with the Hezbollah group, which is allied to Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad.
Several recent bombings have targeted senior Hezbollah figures and areas controlled by the group.
Yesterday's blast was heard across the city and sent thick black smoke billowing across the central commercial district behind the government headquarters and above the seafront of the Lebanese capital.
The army cordoned off the area to prevent people from getting close to the scene, where the twisted wreckage of several cars was still smouldering.
The National News Agency said the explosion had been the result of a car bomb, but security officials said they had no immediate confirmation.
The security officials said that Mr Chatah had been on the way to a meeting at Mr Hariri's Beirut residence when the bomb hit.
The Syrian war has raised tensions between Lebanon's Sunni and Shi'ite communities as each side lines up in support of their brethren in the conflict next door.
That has fuelled fears that Lebanon, which is still recovering from its 15-year civil war that ended in 1990, is on the brink of descending into full-blown sectarian violence.
Mr Chatah, a well-known economist and former ambassador to the US, was one of the most prominent aides of former prime minister Rafik Hariri, who was killed in a lorry bombing in Beirut in 2005 not far from yesterday's explosion.
He later became finance minister when Mr Hariri's son Saad took over the premiership, and stayed on as his senior adviser after Mr Hariri lost the post in early 2011.
