Green Zone Bombing
Reports are limited, but it appears that a bomb was successfully used at the Iraqi Parliment building in the “Green Zone”. You will recall that two weeks ago several suicide vests were found in that “safe” area. Take much of the following with a grain of salt.
CNN
The suicide attack in Iraq’s parliament building on Thursday killed eight people, including two Iraqi lawmakers, and wounded 20, U.S. and Iraqi officials said.
After the attack in the building’s cafeteria, more explosives were found near the parliament room and were destroyed in a controlled detonation, according to Iraqi lawmaker Iman al-Asadi.
It is unclear how the bomber was able to pass through the multiple security checkpoints required to enter the parliament building, which is in Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone.
The Associated Press, citing Mohammed Abu Bakr, the parliament’s media relations chief, said some security procedures had changed earlier in the day at a Green Zone entrance near the parliament building.
The entrance’s security scanner was not working, Abu Bakr told the AP, and pedestrians entering the zone were subject to hand searches and passed through metal detectors, he said.
U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said that based on “the trends” of the attack, al Qaeda in Iraq is believed to be responsible for the bombing, although he stressed an investigation is under way.
The dead include at least two lawmakers, a Sunni and a Shiite, according to Muhanned Jabbar, an official with the office of Iraq’s speaker of parliament.
The Shiite lawmaker’s identity has not been released. Jabbar identified the Sunni as Mohammed Hassan Awadh, a member of the National Dialogue bloc.
