AFP - Lebanese officials on Friday vowed to take action against villagers who lynched a murder suspect and hung him with a butcher's hook in the village square in a shocking crime described as barbaric.

"Whatever the feeling of the villagers, nothing can justify this type of reaction," Justice Minister Ibrahim Najjar said.

"We have the names of at least 10 people who took part in this horrible crime and the courts must now do their work," he added. "No state of law can condone what happened."

The lynching took place on Thursday in the village of Ketermaya, about 25 kilometres (15 miles) southeast of Beirut, as police escorted the prime suspect in the murder of an elderly couple and their two granddaughters, aged seven and nine, to re-enact his crime.

Video footage showed a mob of angry villagers surrounding the police vehicles, dragging out the suspect, Mohammed Muslem, and beating and stabbing him to death.

They then stripped him down to his underwear and socks and dragged him through the streets as villagers stomped on his bloodied corpse.

His body was also paraded on the bonnet of a white Mercedes before being hoisted on to an electric pole with a butcher's hook.

It was left there for about a half hour as onlookers clapped or took pictures with their mobile phones and village women ululated.

Police officers escorting Muslem watched the scene helplessly. At one point they managed to wrest him from the seething crowd only to be overpowered by the villagers.

The army finally intervened in force and took away his corpse.

Lebanese newspapers carried graphic pictures of the lynching while television stations continuously aired video footage.

"Barbaric times," headlined the French language daily L'Orient-Le Jour, which carried a front-page picture of Moslem's bloodied corpse hanging from the electricity pole.

"This barbaric act is unprecedented and possible only in countries where the law of the jungle prevails," said the Arabic language daily Al-Akhbar.

"The crowd killed Mohammed Muslem thinking that they were serving justice but actually they killed justice," it added.

Police chief Ashraf Rifi said he had taken disciplinary measures against the officers escorting Muslem for failing to take the necessary precautions, given the anger of the villagers less than 24 hours after the quadruple murder.

Interior Minister Ziad Baroud also denounced the lynching and called for an inquiry.

A security official told AFP that Muslem, an Egyptian, was already wanted in Ketermaya for the rape of a 13-year-old girl about two months ago.

He had apparently gone to the village seeking the help of the elderly couple in convincing the rape victim's parents to consent to him marrying her.

Under Lebanese law, a rapist who marries his victim no longer faces prosecution.

"Apparently the elderly couple told him they could do nothing for him and he killed them and the kids," the official said.