BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — An apparent suicide bomber detonated inside a cafeteria in Iraq’s parliament building on Thursday, killing two lawmakers and wounding 10 others — including three lawmakers, an Iraqi official said.
The parliament building is in Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone.
The initial investigation indicates a suicide bomber caused the blast, according to Muhammed Jabbar, an official with Iraq’s speaker of parliament.
The explosion happened around 2:30 p.m. (6:30 a.m. ET) inside the cafeteria, where Iraqi parliamentarians frequently have lunch, lawmaker Mouna Zalzalah said.
Zalzalah and others inside the building — which once served as Baghdad’s convention center — were immediately put in lockdown as a precaution following the explosion.
In addition to parliament, the building also houses Iraqi government offices.
There were no American casualties in the blast, according to the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and a U.S. government official in Washington.
The Green Zone, a four-square-mile area in Baghdad, is the seat of U.S. power and the site of the Iraqi government and parliament. It is also known as the International Zone.
Security inside the Green Zone has been compromised in recent weeks, prompting the U.S. Defense Department to recently require all personnel to wear body armor and helmets when outside buildings in the Green Zone, a source there said.
On March 22, two mortar rounds struck inside the Green Zone during a live news conference, causing visiting U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon to duck in surprise.
On March 27, a U.S. soldier and American contractor were killed and five people were wounded when a rocket landed in the Green Zone.
Two unexploded suicide vests were found inside the Green Zone on March 31.
Truck bomb brings down bridge
A suicide truck bomb exploded on a major bridge in northern Baghdad Thursday morning, sending cars into the Tigris River and killing at least 10 people and wounding 26 others, according to an Iraqi Interior Ministry official..
Video of the scene showed two large sections in the middle of al-Sarafiya bridge collapsed into the river.
The al-Sarafiya bridge connected the predominantly Sunni Adhamiya neighborhood and Bab al-Muadham, a mixed district.
The iron bridge, one of Baghdad’s oldest, was built by British forces in 1946.
U.S. military: Iran trains insurgents
Meanwhile, the U.S. military said Wednesday that Iraqi insurgents are being trained in Iran to assemble weapons and Iranian-made weapons are still turning up in Iraq.
The statement comes two months after the United States said it had asked Tehran to stop the flow of weapons into Iraq.
Coalition forces found a cache of Iranian rockets and grenade launchers in Baghdad on Tuesday, spokesman U.S. Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said Wednesday.
“The death and violence in Iraq are bad enough without this outside interference,” Caldwell said. “Iran and all of Iraq’s neighbors really need to respect Iraq’s sovereignty and allow the people of this country the time and the space to choose their own future.”
February, Caldwell said the United States had asked Iran to stop the transfer of weapons.
President Bush has said a branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard called the Quds Force is behind the supply of Iranian weapons. Tehran has denied interfering in Iraq.
Caldwell also said Wednesday that two militants who were recently detained said they had received training in Syria, another nation the Bush administration has accused of meddling in the region.
Munitions from Iran were found in a black Mercedes sedan in Baghdad’s Jihad neighborhood on Tuesday after a tip from a civilian, Caldwell said. An Iranian-made rocket was found in the back seat and Iranian weapons were found in the trunk and around a nearby house, he said.
In an unusual development, he said coalition forces have found evidence that Sunni insurgents in Iraq received help from intelligence services in the Shiite nation of Iran.
Pentagon extends Army tours
The Pentagon announced Wednesday that the standard yearlong tour of duty for U.S. Army soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan has been extended to 15 months to meet targets for troop buildup.
The tour extension, announced by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, is intended to make tours more predictable and avoid the situation of giving troops little advance notice they will have to stay.
CNN’s Mohammed Tawfeeq, Carolina Sanchez and Jamie McIntyre contributed to this report.
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