A bomb exploded in an armored car among those belonging to the speaker of Parliament, wounding the American security guard who was driving it out of a parking area in the government Green Zone and disrupting a meeting of lawmakers nearby, a parliamentary aide said.
Though the speaker, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, was not in the vehicle and was unscathed, the assassination attempt was one of the most serious breaches of security yet within the Green Zone, the heavily fortified government district on the west bank of the Tigris River.
The bomb, which exploded in midafternoon, was planted inside an armored car that resembled the one the speaker uses and was usually used as a decoy car in his convoy, said the parliamentary aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk publicly about the attack.
Only part of the bomb exploded, the aide said. A police official said investigators believe that the bomb was planted inside the Green Zone and detonated by cellphone.
Mr. Mashhadani, a hard-line Sunni Arab nationalist reviled by many Shiites, was attending a Parliament meeting inside the Green Zone convention center at the time of the explosion. He and other legislators were forced to stay inside for hours afterward while the American military secured the area.
Edward Wong explains in the article that Mahhadani is a controversial figure in Iraq politics.
Obviously, if the assassination attempt would have succeeded it would have been another gigantic blow for those who support a Democratic Iraq and it would – once again – have signaled the inability of the American troops to secure Iraq.
Luckily it did not succeed. However, that was not due to the ability of the American and Iraqi forces to secure the Green Zone let alone Iraq in general; it was because Mashhadani was not in the car.
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