Iraqi parliament speaker escapes car bomb

Iraq’s largest Sunni-Arab political party today condemned a car bomb attack inside Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone that apparently attempted to kill Iraq’s controversial speaker of parliament.

The small bomb exploded yesterday afternoon at the back of an armoured car in the motorcade of the Sunni speaker, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, as it was driving into a car park near the Green Zone's convention centre, where al-Mashhadani and other Iraqi legislators were meeting, a parliamentary aide said.