Eight people died in the Iraqi parliament when a suicide bomber slipped through multiple checkpoints in the heavily fortified Green Zone in Baghdad.

Twenty more people were wounded in the blast which tore through a cafeteria at lunchtime. It is believe at least three of the dead were Iraqi MPs.

The Green Zone is a heavily protected area in central Baghdad that contains parliament, government offices and the US embassy.

One of the dead politicians was Mohammed Awad, a member of the Sunni National Dialogue Front, said Saleh al-Mutlaq, the leader of the party.

The second legislator killed was Taha al-Liheibi, of the Sunni Accordance Front, according to Mohammed Abu Bakr, who heads the legislature’s media department.

Abu Bakr said he saw a suicide bomber’s body at the restaurant.

A security scanner that checks pedestrians at the entrance to the Green Zone near the parliament building was not working today, Abu Bakr said.


A truck bomb earlier killed at least seven people on Sarafiya bridge in northern Baghdad, a main artery linking east and west Baghdad, sending several cars into the River Tigris.