Ammon News - Reuters - A car bomb exploded near a local government building in the Lebanese town of Hermel on Thursday, killing at least three people and wounding several more, local media and residents said.

Hermel is in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley near its northern border with Syria and is known as a stronghold of the Shi'ite militant and political movement Hezbollah.

Local channels, including Hezbollah's Al Manar, broadcast images of a large plume of smoke pouring up from a square and the twisted wreckage of a car.

Lebanon's national news agency and residents in the area said three people were killed. The news agency said 15 more were wounded.

Lebanon, a small Mediterranean country, has been increasingly affected by the civil war in neighboring Syria, where Hezbollah has sent fighters and military advisers.