Eight people were killed and 20 wounded as an explosion rocked the Iraqi parliament in Baghdad on Thursday, according to the U.S. military. Iraqi officials said three MPs were among the dead.

A U.S. military spokesman said the attack appeared to be the work of a suicide bomber.

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"It appears from eyewitness accounts that it was a suicide vest. The initial count for casualties as of this time is about eight dead and about 20 wounded from that," Major General William Caldwell was quoted as saying by Sky News in Britain.

A witness said the blast appeared to take place inside a restaurant inside the building at a time when many members of parliament were having lunch.

The parliament building is located in the heavily fortified Green Zone in Baghdad.

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 identified a second lawmaker killed in the blast as a Shiite MP. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

But Mukhlis al-Zamili of the Shiite Fadhila party said the second dead lawmaker was a Kurd. And he said six of those wounded were members of the radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's bloc.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the attack was carried out by those "who wish to stop the Iraqi people having a future that would be based on democracy and stability."

She said the Baghdad security plan was in its early stages and "we have said there will be good days and bad days."

Earlier, a truck bomb killed at least seven people on a key bridge in northern Baghdad, destroying most of the steel structure and sending several cars plunging into the River Tigris below, police said.

Two main sections of the Sarafiya bridge, a main artery linking east and west Baghdad, collapsed into the river. One army officer on the scene said explosive charges might have also been used to bring down a bridge that local residents said was built by the British in the early 1900s.

Among the dead were four policemen who drowned after their car toppled into the river's muddy waters, police said.

U.S. and Iraqi forces launched a security crackdown in the capital two months ago that has reduced death squad killings, but car and truck bombs still kill and wound scores.

The destruction of the bridge will cause major disruption in northern Baghdad. Two other bridges across the Tigris in that part of the capital are shut for security reasons while another is regarded by many residents as too dangerous to use.

"There is a conspiracy to isolate the two halves of Baghdad," parliament Speaker Mahmoud Mashhadani, an outspoken Sunni politician, told lawmakers.

A dozen bridges cross the Tigris in Baghdad, linking the east and west of the city.

Since the bombing of a revered Shi'ite shrine in the town of Samarra in February 2006, a wave of sectarian violence has reshaped the fabric of this once mixed city. Sunnis mainly live on the west side of the river and Shi'ites on the east.

Police said seven people had been killed in the bridge blast. They said up to 22 people were wounded. At least five cars had fallen into the river, including the police vehicle.

The Baghdad security operation is regarded as a last-ditch attempt to halt Iraq's slide into civil war between majority Shi'ites and minority Sunni Arabs who were dominant under Saddam Hussein.

U.S. President George W. Bush is sending 30,000 more troops to Iraq, mainly to help with the Baghdad offensive.

Around 100,000 American and Iraqi forces are already in the capital for the push and all reinforcements should arrive by the end of May.