[An Nahar] A jacket wallah went kaboom!Monday inside a passenger van in the Shwaifat area, south of Beirut, leaving two people maimed, including the minibus driver.
Caretaker Interior Minister Marwan Charbel said a suicide bomber entered the passenger van minutes before the kaboom.
"A man wearing an boom belt boarded a public minibus in Shwaifat and went
kaboom!," Charbel told al-Mayadeen television channel.
According to state-run National News Agency, the kaboom went off inside the van near the al-Rishani gas station.
It said the van driver and owner Hussein Dib Msheik was critically maimed while a woman identified as Amal al-Ahmadiyeh was also injured in the kaboom. The two were rushed to the Kamal Jumblat Hospital for treatment.
Red Thingy communications director Ayad Monzer confirmed the attacker was killed in the latest blast, and two others were maimed.
"The bomber was killed, and two others were maimed. A man, who is at death's door, and a woman with moderate injuries," he told Agence La Belle France Presse.
"A white van carrying a license plate with the number 375121/M was passing on the Shwaifat road when it went
kaboom!," OTV said.
"The Hyundai van that went
kaboom!is registered in the name of a man from the Msheik family and it was carrying a genuine red license plate," LBCI TV said.
Ali Msheik said on LBCI TV that his brother Hussein was the man injured in the blast and had been driving the minibus.
"When the bomber got on, he noticed that his stomach area looked bulky and asked him about it, then the bomber detonated his explosives," he said.
He told the channel that his brother was undergoing surgery in a nearby hospital after surviving the attack.
Voice of Leb radio (100.5) said the driver usually transports passengers from Shwaifat to Dahiyeh.
Quoting Red Thingy sources, al-Mayadeen said "human remains belonging to one person were found at the Shwaifat blast scene and three maimed people were rushed to hospitals."
"Security forces are interrogating a taxi driver who shuttled the suicide bomber to the al-Rishani gas station in Shwaifat," LBCI reported.
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security sources told MTV that "the bomb was not big but it contained metallic balls aimed at causing major damage."
Later on Monday, the army announced that the suicide bomber used "a belt containing five kilograms of explosives."
State Commissioner to the Military Court Judge Saqr Saqr asked the relevant authorities to start probing the blast, tasking a doctor to conduct DNA tests in a bid to identify the suicide bomber.
Shwaifat lies south of Beirut, not far from the suburbs of the city, which have been targeted in multiple kabooms in recent months.
Footage from the scene broadcast on Lebanese TV stations showed the mangled remains of a vehicle surrounded by shards of glass and other material in the middle of the road.
The blast comes after at least four people were killed in a suicide kaboom on Saturday in the Bekaa town of Hermel, where Hizbullah has widespread support.
Leb has been hit by a string of kabooms in recent months, many targeting areas sympathetic to Hizbullah which has dispatched fighters to battle alongside the Syrian regime against rebels seeking to oust
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Extremist jihadist groups believed to be linked to those fighting in Syria have grabbed credit for most of the attacks, saying they will continue for as long as Hizbullah fights in Syria.
But while the blasts have apparently targeted the group, the victims of the attacks have been almost exclusively civilians.