Bombing Hits Parliament in Baghdad

It can hardly aid George Bush's argument that the surge is reducing violence in Baghdad when insurgents manage to detonate a bomb well inside the green zone in an Iraqi parliament cafe killing Iraqi MP's.

And yet that is what has just taken place and, although initial reports are sketchy on the numbers, they are reporting at least two Iraqi MP's are dead.

One of the dead lawmakers was Mohammed Awad, a member of the Sunni National Dialogue Front, said Saleh al-Mutlaq, the leader of the party, which holds 11 seats in Iraq's legislature. A female Sunni lawmaker from the same list was wounded, he said.

A security official at the parliament building said a second lawmaker, a Shiite member, also was killed. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

Earlier in the day, security officials at the parliament used dogs to check people entering the building in a rare precaution -- apparently concerned that an attack might take place. The brazen bombing was the clearest evidence yet that militants can penetrate even the most secure locations. Masses of U.S. and Iraqi soldiers are on the streets of Baghdad in the ninth week of a security crackdown in the capital and security measures inside the Green Zone have been significantly hardened in recent weeks.

In a separate incident earlier in the day insurgents detonated a bomb on Baghdad's historic al-Sarafiya bridge, sending the structure tumbling into the Tigris River.

Initial reports indicated at least 10 people died and two dozen were injured. Officials dispatched boats, helicopters and divers to the scene to try to rescue an estimated 20 people whose vehicles tumbled from the structure into the water.

The 75-year-old structure connects the Sunni neighborhood of Waziriyah to the Shiite area of Utafiyah.

An attack inside the green zone and on a piece of vital Iraqi infrastructure on the same day certainly is audacious. Although US commanders continue to insist that the violence is falling in Baghdad, they don't point out that they are referring to one particular type of violence in one Iraqi city. The very one that the insurgents today laid waste to.

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Tags: Baghdad, bombing, Iraq war, surge and accelerate, Bush