At least 41 people have been killed and more than 180 injured after twin suicide bombings rocked a stronghold of Lebanon’s Shiite Hezbollah movement in south Beirut, officials said.

And Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement posted online.

“Soldiers of the Caliphate” detonated explosives planted on a motorbike in an area frequented by Shi’ites, using a derogatory term to refer to the sect, the statement said after Thursday’s blasts.

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“After the apostates gathered in the area, one of the knights of martyrdom detonated his explosive belt in the midst of them,” the statement added.

The claim could not be independently verified but the statement followed the usual format of IS claims of responsibility and was circulated on jihadist online accounts.

Police said two men on foot set off suicide vests in front of a shopping centre in Burj al-Barajneh, in the southern suburbs of the capital.

The blast happened around 6:00pm (local time), according to witnesses.

Lebanon’s interior minister Nouhad Machnouk confirmed that the death toll had reached 41.

The blast is the first to target Beirut’s southern suburbs since June 2014, when a suicide car bomb killed a security officer who had tried to stop the bomber.

But prior to that, a string of attacks targeted Hezbollah strongholds throughout the country.

Between July 2013 and February 2014 there were nine attacks on Hezbollah bastions, most claimed by Sunni extremists.

The groups claimed the attacks were in revenge for Hezbollah’s decision to send thousands of fighters into neighbouring Syria to support president Bashar al-Assad’s forces against a Sunni-dominated uprising.

Local television stations showed footage of injured people being carried away by emergency services and civilians.

“I’d just arrived at the shops when the blast went off. I carried four bodies with my own hands, three women and a man, a friend of mine,” one man, who gave his name as Zein al-Abideen Khaddam, told local television.

Another, who did not give his name, described the sound of the two blasts.

“When the second blast went off, I thought the world had ended,” he said.