BEIRUT — A car bomb ripped through eastern Beirut today, killing Lebanon’s top anti-terrorism investigator as he returned from a meeting on the probe into the 2005 assassination of a former prime minister, authorities said. Three others died in the blast.

The force of the explosion in the primarily Christian neighborhoods of Hazmieh set a dozen vehicles ablaze and ripped a crater in the asphalt six feet wide and 3 feet deep.

The country’s national police chief, Brigadier General Ashraf Rifi, confirmed that the car bomb killed Captain Wissam Eid, who handled police intelligence investigations including “all those having to do with the terrorist bombings” in Lebanon, General Rifi said.

Eid had survived two previous assassination attempts, including a bomb targeting his house and a raid in the northern port city of Tripoli, Interior Minister Hassan Sabei told LBC television.

Lebanon’s sports minister, Ahmed Fatfat, said the officer was on his way home from a meeting at the headquarters of the U.N. commission investigating the 2005 assassination of a former premier, Rafik Hariri. The commission’s office is in a hilltop village about a 15-minute drive from the site of the explosion.

Eid’s bodyguard also was killed, General Rifi said.

Casualty figures fluctuated because some bodies were severely damaged and scattered across the area. A police statement later today put the total figure at four dead — one still unidentified — and 38 wounded.

Lebanon has been hit by a series of explosions, some of them political assassinations, amid a deepening 14-month political crisis. Today’s blast came a day after a labor strike that was largely peaceful, and 10 days after a car bomb aimed at an American Embassy vehicle killed three bystanders.