Country's leaders hold emergency meeting after bombings kill 44

Lebanese Prime Minister Tammam Salam held an emergency meeting with his Security Cabinet and military chiefs on Friday as the nation mourned 44 people killed in a double suicide bombing.

The blasts late on Thursday hit a residential and commercial area in a southern suburb of Beirut, a stronghold of Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah, in the latest spillover of violence from the war in neighboring Syria. The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility.

The first attacks in more than a year on a Hezbollah bastion inside Lebanon came at time when the group is stepping up its involvement in Syria's civil war, now in its fifth year.