BEIRUT, Jan 16: A car bomb exploded near a local Government building in the Lebanese town of Hermel today, killing at least three people and wounding several more, local media and residents said.
Hermel is in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley near its northern border with Syria and is known as a stronghold of the Shi’ite militant and political movement Hezbollah.
Local channels, including Hezbollah’s Al Manar, broadcast images of a large plume of smoke pouring up from a square and the twisted wreckage of a car.
Lebanon’s national news agency and residents in the area said three people were killed. The news agency said 15 more were wounded.
Lebanon, a small Mediterranean country, has been increasingly affected by the civil war in neighbouring Syria, where Hezbollah has sent fighters and military advisers. (AGENCIES)

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 16: Malaysia’s Internet regulator today denied accusations that it was blocking access to a BBC report about netizens in the Muslim-majority nation lampooning the country’s prime minister.
Prime Minister Najib Razak’s administration faces public discontent over hikes in Government-controlled fuel and power prices.
He responded to the criticism in a weekend speech in which he highlighted a drop in the price of water spinach, a common dish in Malaysian cuisine known locally as “kangkung”.
Malaysians soon began mocking the aristocratic Najib — who recently came under fire for travelling with his wife on luxurious private jets at taxpayer’s expense — as being out of touch with common citizens.
Critics posted thousands of tweets and a Facebook page simply titled “Kangkung” that pokes fun at Najib has garnered 18,000 likes, while local media said “Keep Calm and Eat Kangkung” t-shirts have gone on sale.
British broadcaster the BBC picked up the story in a report on its website Tuesday, but many Malaysian Web-users began to complain that they could not access it about 24 hours later, sparking accusations it was being blocked by the authorities.
The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) told AFP it had not blocked the page, but said various Malaysian service providers could have acted of their own accord.
“Not that I know of. From our end there is no block,” its corporate communications head Sheikh Raffie Abdul Rahman said.
News portal Malaysiakini also quoted him as saying that the inaccessibility could be due to an overload by users accessing the page.
But Malaysian technology sites ruled this out, saying it would have affected the entire BBC site, not a particular page.
They also reported that the block appeared to have been lifted by today.
The problem appeared to mainly affect those using Government-controlled Telekom Malaysia’s (TM) Internet service. (AGENCIES)