dominick cain, al jazeera. >> reporter: and our correspondent joins us from beirut, she is at the scenee blast. and if i can first get you to begin by describing the scene there and what happened. >> okay, we are here in downtown beirut. as you can see the security forces have got the area baricaded and keeping journalists away and it was a car bomb and he was passing by when the car exploded and he was killed with four other including his body guardian 17 other people have been injured. this is an area that is very prominent and rebuilt by the family. it was their own project and source of pride for them and a place where the tourist come and the lebanese come back for christmas holidays to spend time. most of the banks have headquarters here, shopping malls, movie theatres and a very up scale residential area. the camera man will try -- he is trying to show you the christmas tree at the end of this road. there is just over there is usually very busy in the afternoon. now it was early in the morning about 9:30 in the morning and it wasn't that busy but security is usually very tight ar

troops deployed to the area and dominick cain has more and you may find some of the images disturbing reporter: the scenes show the aftermath of the explosion, a car bomb detonated in beirut downtown business district. it killed the former finance minister, the close aid hariri and a leader of the future movement and body guards killed and people nearby and blew out windows across a wide area and one retired lebanese general told al jazeera that all the leaders of the march the 14th anti-syria group were due to be in the area for a meeting when the bomb went off. >> the killer was waiting for very important target among those at the meeting and security measures but when you talk about terrorism and security can minimize the damage and it cannot stop it. >> reporter: one prominent academic described what kind of man mohamed chath had been. >> mohamed chatah was a graceful and ideological man and one of the faces of the march 14 movement in the hariri group. >> reporter: the killing comes as he was preparing for meetings in january over the international tribunal looking in the 2005 as