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A Bosnian woman passes the remains of a monument in southern city Mostar, 65 miles from the capital of Sarajevo, on Monday. A bomb blast destroyed earlier in the day destroyed the memorial honoring soldiers of Bosnia's Muslim-dominated wartime army.

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina — A bomb blast destroyed a monument to fallen soldiers of Bosnia's Muslim-dominated wartime army on Monday in the southern town of Mostar, where divisions between ethnic Croats and Muslims still run deep.

Police said an "explosive device" had destroyed the lily-shaped monument in front of Mostar's city hall in the early hours of Monday morning.

Bosnia's international peace overseer, Valentin Inzko, said he was "appalled" by the attack and appealed for calm.

"This violence must not be allowed to spread," Inzko said in a statement.

Home to around 70,000 people, Mostar saw heavy fighting during Bosnia's 1992-95 war.

Despite Western efforts to encourage reintegration, the town remains largely divided between Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks) on the east bank of the Neretva river and Croats on the west, where the city hall is located.

No one was injured in the explosion.

"Police are investigating the circumstances and hope to locate the perpetrator soon," Srecko Bosnjak, spokesman for the Mostar police, said.

The monument to the Bosnian army was built last year, next to a memorial in honor of Croat veterans of the conflict.

Post-war violence in Mostar has been largely confined to clashes between rival football fans, but political leaders continue to resist the efforts of Western overseers to unify the town.

Each community has its own utility services, electricity provider and education system.

Ethnic politicking has paralyzed the town more than once, and in October last year Mostar was the only town in Bosnia where local elections were postponed due to a dispute over how to hold the vote.

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Reuters

Army bomb disposal officers prepare to carry out a controlled explosion on a bomb discovered under a police officer's car in Belfast on Sunday.

BELFAST — An attempt by militant nationalists to kill a Northern Irish policeman was foiled when a booby-trap bomb "clearly intended to kill" was found under his car, police said on Sunday. 

The attack was the latest by splinter groups of Irish republicans opposed to British rule of the province and a 1998 peace agreement that ended 30 years of sectarian conflict. 

It came two months after the first murder of a prison officer in almost 20 years and followed two weeks of rioting by pro-British loyalists protesting against restrictions on the flying of Britain's union flag from Belfast City Hall. 

The bomb, which the officials said was "clearly intended to kill the police officer," was discovered under the officer's car near the Northern Irish parliament in east Belfast, according to BBC News.  The officer found the device just before he was going out to lunch along with his family, the BBC added.

The officer's home and those of his neighbors were evacuated while army bomb disposal experts defused the device. 

"Obviously there are people out there who are still intent on causing murder and mayhem. Attacks on police officers are attacks on the entire community and cannot be allowed to continue," Assistant Chief Constable George Hamilton said in a statement. 

'Attempt to kill': Police in Belfast attacked as flag riots rage on

"Our belief is that this attempted murder was carried out by those opposed to peace from within dissident republicanism. They don't care who they attack, they don't care who they kill." 

More than 3,600 people were killed in Northern Ireland when Catholic nationalists seeking union with Ireland fought British security forces and mainly Protestant loyalists determined to remain part of the United Kingdom. 

Clinton condemns violence, revisits family legacy in trip to Belfast

Militant nationalists have stepped up attacks in recent years. As well as last month's killing of the prison officer, two soldiers and a policeman were shot dead in March 2009 and another policeman was killed by a car bomb in April 2010. 

Reuters contributed to this report. 

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Updated at 4:43 p.m. ET: BEIRUT, Lebanon -- A huge car bomb explosion in Beirut on Friday killed a top Lebanese security official whose investigations implicated Syria and Hezbollah in the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik al-Hariri seven years ago.

The rush-hour bomb in the center of the Lebanese capital killed eight people and wounded about 80 others, heightening fears that Syria's war is spilling over into Lebanon.

Among the dead was Wissam al-Hassan, the head of a Lebanese intelligence agency who had also uncovered a recent bomb plot that led to the arrest of a pro-Syrian Lebanese politician, a Lebanese official said.

Al-Hassan was a close aide to Hariri, a Sunni Muslim who was killed in a 2005 bomb attack in downtown Beirut. Al-Hassan's investigation into Hariri's death uncovered evidence that implicated Syria and Hezbollah in the killing.

Follow this story at BreakingNews.com

It was also not clear if the explosion targeted any political figure in Lebanon's divided community but it occurred at a time of heightened tension between Lebanese factions on opposite sides of the Syria conflict.

Ambulances rushed to the scene in the Ashafriyeh district, a mostly Christian area, as smoke rose from the area. 

The explosion ripped through the street where the office of the anti-Damascus Christian Phalange Party is located near Sassine Square.

Reuters

Phalange leader Sami al-Gemayel, a staunch opponent of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and a member of parliament, condemned the attack.

"Let the state protect the citizens. We will not accept any procrastination in this matter, we cannot continue like that. We have been warning for a year. Enough," said Gemayel, whose brother was assassinated in November 2006.

Several cars were set on fire by the explosion and the front of a multi-story building was badly damaged. Residents ran about in panic looking for relatives while others helped carry the wounded to ambulances, Reuters reported. 

Slideshow: Bombing in Beirut

Reuters

Huge blast explodes in a central Beirut street injures dozens, kills at least eight.

Launch slideshow

Pope tells Christians in Beirut: 'Be peacemakers'

Security forces blanketed the area.

Witness Danny Rizkallah told NBC News the blast took place close to the headquarters of a Lebanese opposition political party with links to Syria rebels and close to the scene of the 1982 assassination of then president-elect Bachir Gemayel. The affluent, largely Christian, district is also home to the American University of Science and Technology (AUST).

He said he was having lunch nearby when the blast lifted him from his chair. “It was an incredibly powerful explosion,” he said. “I knew immediately it was a bomb because it has such a different sound to shelling.”

“I rushed around the corner to see what happened there were lots of people injured by broken glass from the windows of nearby stores. It did a great deal of damage to nearby buildings and there was a lot of glass.

Hasan Shaaban / Reuters

Burning cars and damages are seen at the site of an explosion in Ashafriyeh, central Beirut, October 19, 2012.

“For this to happen is shocking because we really thought this sort of thing had stopped in Beirut, and for it to happen in the Christian district is also very unusual. I really don’t know who is behind this, or why. Our politics is very messed-up.”

The last bombing in Beirut was in 2008 when three people were killed in an explosion that damaged a U.S. diplomatic car. 

U.S. officials are condemning the attack "in the strongest terms," calling the blast a terrorist attack.

"We condemn this act of terrorism," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.

"There is no justification for such violence," she added. "We obviously express our heartfelt sympathies for the families and the loved ones of those who were killed and injured, and we stand by the people of Lebanon and renew our commitment to a stable, sovereign, and independent Lebanon."

National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said in a statement there is "no justification for using assassination as a political tool." He says the U.S. will stand with the Lebanese government to bring to justice those responsible "for this barbaric attack."

Sunni-Shiite tensions
Tension between Sunnis and Shiites has been rumbling in Lebanon ever since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war but reignited after the Syria conflict erupted.

It reached its peak when Hariri, a Sunni, was killed in 2005. Hariri supporters accused Syria and then Hezbollah of killing him -- a charge they both deny. An international tribunal accused several Hezbollah members of involvement in the murder.

Clashes over Syrian conflict in Lebanon leave ten dead

Hezbollah's political opponents, who have for months accused it of aiding Assad's forces -- have warned that its involvement in Syria could ignite sectarian tension of the civil war. 

However fighting had broken out this year between supporters and opponents of Assad in the northern city of Tripoli.

Reuters, The Associated Press and NBC News' Paul Nassar contributed to this report.

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Updated at 9:25 a.m. ET: A suicide bomber attacked a minibus near Kabul airport in Afghanistan on Tuesday, killing at least nine people including eight foreign civilians working for an international aviation company, according to reports citing local officials.

Afghan militants claimed responsibility, saying the attack was carried out by a young female in retaliation for a film mocking the Prophet Muhammad.

The South African International Affairs Ministry said that eight of the victims were South African citizens.

Spokesman Nelson Kgwete told The Associated Press that the victims are believed to have been employed by a South African aviation company based at Rand Airport in Johannesburg. 

Earlier, Reuters reported that Russians were also among the foreign workers killed. Unidentified police sources put the total death toll higher than the local officials, saying 12 had died.

The attack underscored growing anger in Afghanistan over the film, which has enraged much of the Muslim world and led to the killing last week of the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans.

US-Afghan military operations suspended after attacks

Thousands of protesters clashed with police in the Afghan capital on Monday, burning cars and hurling rocks at security forces in the worst outbreak of demonstration-related violence since rioting in February over the inadvertent burning of Qurans by U.S. soldiers.

The death toll from the suicide attack was the highest on foreigners in the city since April 2011 when an Afghan air force pilot gunned down eight U.S. military flight instructors and an American civilian adviser after an argument at Kabul International Airport.

Haroon Zarghoon, a spokesman for Hizb-i-Islami -- a radical militant group that shares some of the Taliban's anti-foreigner, anti-government aims -- told the Associated Press that the attack was carried out by a 22-year-old woman named Fatima. However, the AP noted that suicide bombings carried out by women are extremely rare in Afghanistan — and few if any women drive cars. 

Another spokesman for the group, Zubair Sediqqi, told Reuters: "A woman wearing a suicide vest blew herself up in response to the anti-Islam video."

Gen. Abdul Zahir, director of the local Criminal Investigation Department, told NBC News there was no way of confirming yet if the bomber was a male or female.

Reuters cited unidentified police sources saying the bomber was a woman, possibly driving a Toyota Corolla car rigged with explosives, which she triggered.

Local photojournalist Massoud Hossaini who posted a picture of the blast scene on Twitter, said all the foreign bodies he saw were "without any uniform."

Protesters in Kabul and several other Asian cities have vented their fury over the film at the United States, blaming it for what they see as an attack on Islam. The outcry saddles President Barack Obama with an unexpected foreign policy headache as he campaigns for re-election in November. His administration has condemned the film as reprehensible and disgusting.

In response to the violence in Benghazi, Libya, where U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed, and elsewhere lastweek, the United States has sent ships, extra troops and specialforces to protect U.S. interests and citizens in the Middle East, while a number of its embassies have evacuated staff and are on high alert for trouble.

The identity of those directly responsible for the film remains unclear.

Clips posted online since July have been attributed to a man named Sam Bacile, which two people connected with the film have said was probably an alias.

Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, 55, a Coptic Christian widely linked to the film in media reports, was questioned in California on Saturday by U.S. authorities investigating possible violations of his probation for a bank fraud conviction.

NBC News producer Akbar Shinwari in Kabul, Reuters and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

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