A suicide bomber blew himself up inside Iraq’s parliament building yesterday, killing three MPs and five others in a brazen attack on the heart of the country’s nascent democracy.

The bombing, which wounded another two dozen people, came hours after a truck bomb destroyed a bridge near the capital, throwing vehicles into the River Tigris and sending a huge cloud of smoke over the city.

The spectacular attacks appeared to be designed to counter the USled military operation to secure the capital and halt its descent into civil war. Both strikes were laden with symbolism, hitting at parliament in the most heavily protected area of Iraq, and severing ties between predominantly Shia east Baghdad and Sunni-dominated west Baghdad.

The parliament bomber managed to evade massive security measures, including numerous checkpoints, explosives-sniffing dogs and body searches both around and within the green zone compound. He blew himself up in the assembly’s cafeteria, where MPs were sitting down for lunch.

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The bombings in Baghdad - both on Parliament and the bridge - carry huge symbolic significance

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“I saw two legs in the middle of the cafeteria and none of those killed or wounded lost their legs — which means they must be the legs of the suicide attacker,” Mohammed Abu Bakr, a parliamentary spokesman, said.

The dead included two Sunni MPs, Mohammed Awad and Taha al-Liheibi. At least two other Sunni deputies, one of them a woman, were seriously wounded, officials said. The third MP, believed to be a Shia, was missing presumed dead.

Security officials said last night that two other satchel bombs had been found near the cafeteria. They were safely detonated. The officials also said that the bomber was a bodyguard of a Sunni MP, who was not among the dead.

“I saw a lot of MPs wounded and bleeding,” Fouad al-Massoum, a Kurdish MP, said as all gates into the green zone were closed off.

The green zone is a huge compound in central Baghdad that is home to parliament and the US Embassy. The entrance closest to parliament, which is housed in bombproof concrete, has seven checkpoints leading up to it. The first two are manned by Georgian soldiers, the next three by Peruvian guards and the final two by Iraqi police.

The fortress, which also has about 15,000 Iraqi civilians living within its perimeter, is far from impenetrable. Two weeks ago US troops found two suicide bomb belts abandoned near an internal checkpoint. Two suicide bombers killed six people in October 2004.

Khalaf al-Ilyan, a Sunni MP, said that the explosion “underlines the failure of the Government’s security plan”. He added: “The plan is 100 per cent a failure.”

The explosion came as the city was reeling from news that a bridge built by the British in the 1930s had been hit by a truck bomb. The Sarafiyah steel girder bridge in northern Baghdad was cut into two, sending cars plunging into the river. At least seven people were believed to have been killed.

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