Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun condemned on Friday the assassination of Internal Security Forces Intelligence Bureau head Brigadier General Wissam al-Hasan, calling for calm to “confront organized crime,” reported OTV.

He told the television station: “We strongly condemn this crime and I call on the Lebanese people to act calmly.”

The Syrian National Council accused on Friday the “criminal regime” of Syrian President Bashar Assad of assassinating Internal Security Forces Intelligence Bureau head Brigadier General Wissam al-Hasan.

It said in a statement: “We know very well those who are behind these criminal acts and for whom they are being done for.”

Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat on Friday accused Syrian President Bashar Assad of ordering the assassination of Brig. Gen. Wissam al-Hasan, chief of the Intelligence Bureau of the Internal Security Forces, warning that “we must not accuse anyone in Lebanon because we would be implementing what Bashar wants."

 "I openly accuse Bashar Assad and his regime of killing Wissam al-Hasan," Jumblat said.

The United States condemned Friday's deadly car bombing that killed Intelligence Bureau chief Brig. Gen. Wissam al-Hasan as an act of terrorism.

"There is no justification for such violence," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said. "It was a car bomb. We have no reason to believe it was not terrorism. We condemn this act of terrorism."

French President François Hollande on Friday urged all Lebanese officials to protect Lebanon from "all attempts at destabilization," following the bloody car bombing that killed Intelligence Bureau chief Brig. Gen. Wissam al-Hasan in Beirut's Ashrafiyeh district.

"The head of state calls on all Lebanese political officials to maintain Lebanon's unity and protect it from all attempts at destabilization, from wherever they come," Hollande said in a statement.

The Vatican strongly condemned Friday's attack in Beirut's Ashrafiyeh that killed eight people, including Intelligence Bureau chief Brig. Gen. Wissam al-Hasan.

"The attack in Beirut deserves the strongest condemnation for its absurd murderous violence," Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said in a statement, adding that the attack was "contrary to efforts and commitments to maintaining peaceful coexistence in Lebanon."

Roads across Lebanon were blocked on Friday as gunmen appeared on the streets of some regions and fired their weapons into the air, as news broke that Brig. Gen. Wissam al-Hasan, chief of the Intelligence Bureau of the Internal Security Forces, was assassinated in a powerful car bomb in the Beirut neighborhood of Ashrafiyeh.

The al-Beddawi highway in the North was blocked with burning tires, as well as the al-Mitain and Nejmeh Square streets in Tripoli.

Hizbullah on Friday described the assassination of Brig. Gen. Wissam al-Hasan, chief of the Intelligence Bureau of the Internal Security Forces, as an “ugly crime” and an “vicious attempt to undermine stability and national unity.”

In a statement, the party “strongly” condemned “the abominable crime that targeted Brig. Gen. Wissam al-Hasan.”

Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea and Phalange Party leader Amin Gemayel on Friday inspected the scene of the bombing that killed Intelligence Bureau chief Brig. Gen. Wissam al-Hasan and seven other people in the Beirut district of Ashrafiyeh.

“Whatever they do, we will continue our path,” Geagea vowed in televised remarks.

Brigadier General Wissam al-Hasan, chief of the Intelligence Bureau of the Internal Security Forces, was killed on Friday in a car bomb attack in the Beirut district of Ashrafiyeh, state-run National News Agency reported.

The powerful explosion rocked a street adjacent to Sassine Square in Ashrafiyeh, leaving seven other people dead and 78 others wounded, in the first such attack in the Lebanese capital since 2008.