Iraqi Parliament massacre

A suicide bomber killed eight people in the Iraqi Parliament yesterday, slipping through multiple checkpoints in a brazen strike that challenged a major US-backed security crackdown in Baghdad.

US military spokesman Major-General William Caldwell said initial reports showed eight had been killed and 20 wounded in the blast which tore through a café where lawmakers were having lunch. State television said three of the dead were members of parliament.

It was the most serious breach of security in the Green Zone, the sprawling, heavily protected area in central Baghdad that houses Parliament, government offices and the US embassy.

US President George W. Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who is on a trip to the Far East, condemned the attack, which Gen. Caldwell blamed on Sunni Islamist al Qaeda.

The bold attack by a suicide bomber wearing an explosives vest came despite a two-month-old operation by thousands of US and Iraqi troops in the capital regarded as a last chance to stop a slide to full-scale sectarian civil war.

A truck bomb also killed at least seven people on Sarafiya bridge in northern Baghdad, a main artery linking east and west Baghdad, destroying most of the steel structure and sending several cars plunging into the River Tigris below.

How explosives were smuggled into the Green Zone is likely to be the focus of an investigation. They would have had to pass through an outer checkpoint manned by US and Iraqi troops and multiple inner checkpoints guarded by security contractors and foreign troops that are part of the US-led coalition.

"We are trying to backtrack all the systems to see how somebody was able to get a suicide vest into the Convention Centre where the members of Parliament meet... we are looking at who had access there," Gen. Caldwell said by telephone.

The US military said this month that two explosives vests were found in the zone. A third suspected vest was known to have been missing and a hunt was launched to find it.

Fouad al-Massoum, leader of the Kurdish bloc in Parliament, said there was chaos after the explosion.

"Suddenly we heard a huge blast inside the restaurant. I saw a lot of MPs wounded and bleeding," Mr Massoum said.

Security officials, fearing there might be a second explosion, ordered everyone out of the building. But no one, including lawmakers, were allowed to leave the area straight after the blast so they could be questioned, officials said.

A Reuters witness said the explosion took place at the cashier's register in the café, which is near Parliament's main assembly hall. Parliament was in session yesterday.

"I saw a ball of fire and heard a huge, loud explosion. There were pieces of flesh floating in the air," said the witness who was lightly wounded in the arm.

Officials named Mohammed Awadh, a member of the Accordance Front, the biggest Sunni bloc in Parliament as one of the dead lawmakers.

Militants have rarely managed to penetrate the various checkpoints and carry out attacks inside the zone, although the area has come under increasing rocket and mortar attack in recent weeks.

A rocket landed close to a building where Mr Maliki and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon were speaking last month, causing damage but no casualties.

In the worst previous bomb attack in the Green Zone, two al Qaeda bombers blew themselves up at a restaurant and a nearby street in October 2004, killing five people, including three Americans.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday's attack was carried out by those "who wish to stop the Iraqi people having a future that would be based on democracy and stability".

She said the Baghdad security plan was in its early stages and "we have said there will be good days and bad days".

One of Iraq's vice presidents survived a bomb attack at a government ministry outside the Green Zone in February. A deputy prime minister was wounded last month in a suicide bomb attack at a prayer hall in his compound in the capital.