An explosive device was reportedly placed under a car in a parking lot near a shopping mall in the Christian neighborhood of Ashrafiyeh.

[View Video coverage of the explosion]

Dozens of cars were destroyed or burned and panic-stricken Lebanese were on the streets surveying the damage the loud explosion caused.

Black smoke billowed over the area and Lebanese troops cordoned off the area, preventing anyone from approaching the scene in order to pave the way for ambulances.

Red Cross volunteers at the scene said that they transferred the body of a woman who had died after the wall of her apartment fell on her.

'We transferred at least nine wounded with slight injuries with shattered glass,' a Red Cross volunteer said.

The explosion came a few hours after more than 40 people were killed in northern Lebanon in fierce fighting between the Lebanese army and al-Qaeda-linked militants who ambushed soldiers near a Palestinian refugee camp.

The battles had quietened by Sunday evening but tensions remained high. The streets of Tripoli were left deserted - the site of earlier gun battles that killed 23 army soldiers and some 19 al-Qaeda fighters, according to the latest casualty reports.

Lebanese troops launched an assault on a building in Tripoli where militants from Fatah al-Islam were holed up, after a morning of deadly shootouts at the outskirts of the Palestinian refugee camp of Naher al-Bard.

Source: DPA