Lebanon has seen an increase in violence in the last week linked to the conflict in Syria. Five people were killed today in an explosion in a southern Beirut suburb. The area is considered to be a Hezbollah stronghold. It appears that the explosion was caused by a car bomb. The attack followed an announcement by the Lebanese government earlier in the week that it had arrested the head of a jihadist group that had claimed responsibility for a suicide bomb attack on Iran’s embassy in Lebanon in November. We’ll get an update from Joseph Kéchichian, a Middle East scholar and senior writer for Gulf News. He’s based in Beirut, Lebanon. (Photo: Lebanese citizens extinguish a burned car at the site of a car bomb explosion in a stronghold of the Shiite Hezbollah group at the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, Jan. 2, 2014. AP Photo/Hussein Malla)