BEIRUT: Military Judge Saqr Saqr Friday pressed charges against unidentified individuals for being accomplices to the preparation and detonation of the explosive device which went off in a parking lot in Antelias, north of Beirut.

Saqr charged “unknown individuals for being an accomplice” with Ihsan Ali Dia and Hassan Nayef Nassar in the plot to prepare and blow up a bomb and cause casualties and material damage." 

The "unknown individuals" face the death penalty if found guilty.

The charges laid out by Saqr, confirmation for the first time that the attack had been premeditated and involved several actors, fueled speculation that the explosion was an act of terrorism and not, as Interior Minister Marwan Charbel claimed Thursday, the result of a personal dispute.

One security source told The Daily Star that Saqr’s charges indicated the Antelias explosion “was a terrorist act.”

Thursday’s explosion which left Dia and Nassar killed while handling the explosives was caused by a hand grenade wrapped in small iron balls for shrapnel effect, sources told The Daily Star Friday.

Security and judicial sources as well as military experts told The Daily Star that putty explosives were wrapped around the grenade which went off before midday Thursday in a parking lot in the Antelias district, north of Beirut.

The putty was filled with dozens of small iron balls intended to cause as much destruction and casualties as possible, according to the sources.

Meanwhile, Interior Minister Marwan Charbel insisted Friday that initial data obtained suggested with “90 percent” certainty that the explosion was the result of a personal and financial dispute.

Charbel had told Cabinet Thursday that the explosion was the “result of a financial and personal dispute between several people, including some car dealers, two of whom were killed while pulling out the grenade detonator.”

He said investigations were ongoing, adding that there were no signs that any political or administrative figure had been the target of the explosion.

The explosion occurred in a parking lot near Esso gas station on the inner Antelias road in the Metn province at 11:30 a.m., security sources told The Daily Star.