BEIRUT - A powerful blast ripped through a car in the southern suburbs of Beirut on Saturday, killing at least two people, witnesses said.

Witnesses said the explosion gauged a gaping hole in the ground and propelled the car about 10 metres (yards).

Security forces cordoned off the area and carried around large bags to collect the body parts of the car's two occupants, which the force of the blast had thrown up to the second and third-floor levels of the surrounding buildings.

Security sources said they believed one of the people killed by what they called a car bomb was a Lebanese driver for the Iranian embassy.

Beirut's mainly Shiite Muslim southern suburbs form the power base of the Hizbollah group, which conducted a guerrilla campaign that helped drive Israeli forces from south Lebanon in 2000 after a 22-year occupation.

At least two prominent political figures have been assassinated by car bombs in Lebanon in recent years. One was Christian militia leader Elie Hobeika, who commanded a force that carried out massacres in Beirut's Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps in 1982.