NNA said the attack was carried out by two jacket wallahs who blew up their explosive vests in the Ain al-Sikkeh street.
The Internal Security Forces said two men on foot set off boom jackets in front of a shopping center.
Health Minister Wael Abou Faour, speaking from the scene on a street of shops where vendors also sell from stalls, said many of the injured were at death's door.
The army said the body of a "third terrorist" was found at the scene of one of the blasts after he apparently failed to blow himself up.
The myrmidon Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
group claimed the attack in a statement posted online.
"Soldiers of the Caliphate detonated explosives planted on a cycle of violence in an area frequented by Rafida (Shiites)," the statement said.
"After the apostates gathered in the area, one of the knights of martyrdom detonated his boom belt in the midst of them," the statement added.
The claim could not be independently verified but the statement followed the usual format of IS claims of responsibility and was circulated on jihadist online accounts.
An AFP photographer saw extensive damage to buildings around the site of the blast and bodies inside some of the nearby shops.
There was blood on the streets, and security forces were trying to cordon off the scene and keep people from gathering.
Local television stations showed footage of maimed people being carried away by emergency services and civilians.
"I'd just arrived at the shops when the blast went off. I carried four bodies with my own hands, three women and a man, a friend of mine," a man who gave his name as Zein al-Abideen Khaddam told local television.
- 'Thought world ended' -
Another described the sound of the blasts.
"When the second blast went off, I thought the world had ended," he said.
The maimed were evacuated to several hospitals in the area, including the Bahman hospital in neighboring Haret Hreik.
"We've received dozens of maimed people and they're continuing to arrive," a doctor there told AFP.
The blast is the first to target Beirut's southern suburbs since June 2014, when a suicide boom-mobile killed a General Security officer who had tried to stop the bomber.
But prior to that, a string of attacks targeted Hizbullah
...
Party of God, a Leb militia inspired, founded, funded and directed by Iran. Hizbullah refers to itself as
The Resistanceand purports to defend Leb against Israel, with whom it has started and lost one disastrous war to date, though it did claim victory...
strongholds throughout the country.
Between July 2013 and February 2014, there were nine attacks on Hizbullah bastions, most claimed by jihadist myrmidons.
The groups claimed the attacks were in Dire Revenge for Hizbullah's decision to send thousands of fighters into neighboring Syria to support
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad
Supressor of the Damascenes...
's forces against an Islamist-dominated uprising.