Anti-Syrian MP Walid Ido was killed along with his eldest son and six other people in a powerful seafront bomb blast in the Lebanese capital on Wednesday, his party said.
Ido, the 65-year-old chairman of parliament's defence committee, his eldest son Khaled, his two bodyguards and four civilians were killed, said the party's Future Television.
Pieces of flesh and splashes of blood stained the ground as relief workers rushed to transport the wounded to hospital and treat passers-by for shock, an AFP correspondent on the scene said.
The powerful blast threw the body of the victims into the nearby football pitch of a local club.
Troops cordoned off the area which has a number of popular cafes and beach clubs, including the Lebanese army's club, and an amusement park with a large Ferris wheel facing the Mediterranean.
Ido, a near-daily swimmer and card-player at one of the beaches, the Sporting Club, became the third member of Lebanon's parliamentary majority to be killed in a car bombing in the past two years.
The ruling coalition has accused Syria of seeking to eliminate members of the majority, which has now been left with a total of 70 MPs out of the parliament's 128 members.
The United States swiftly condemned the attack.
"The United States deplores this latest attack in Beirut that led to the death of a respected member of parliament, Walid Ido, and his son," National Security spokesman Gordon Johndroe said in a statement.
The blast came amid a showdown between the army and Islamists in northern Lebanon and after a spate of bomb and grenade attacks in and around the capital that members of the ruling coalition have blamed on Syria.
Damascus, which denies the claims, continues to wield considerable clout in Lebanon, where a standoff between the Damascus-backed opposition and the Western-backed government has paralysed politics for seven months.
Syria was forced to end 29 years of military domination in Lebanon after it was widely accused of the 2005 assassination in a seafront bomb blast of former Lebanese premier Rafiq Hariri.
Ido was president of the Beirut appeals court before becoming an active member of Hariri's parliamentary bloc in 2000. After Hariri's death, Ido became an MP in the parliamentary bloc of Hariri's son, Saad Hariri.
