A powerful bomb blast ripped through a commercial area of Beirut, Lebanon Sunday, severely damaging one of the country's largest banks. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
Beirut's Daily Star newspaper quoted a source saying the bomb weighed about 5 kilograms, exploding outside a Blom Bank branch in the upscale Verdun neighborhood, as many nearby residents were at home breaking their day-long Ramadan fasts.
Television footage showed shattered glass and badly damaged vehicles near the blast site.
Investigators were reported working late Sunday to determine the target of the blast.
In recent years, Beirut and its suburbs have been hit with a string of bombings that authorities have frequently linked to the civil war in nearby Syria. However, the Daily Star said Sunday's blast did not resemble those larger explosions, which have mostly targeted Beirut's southern suburbs.
