Green Zone suicide bomb attack kills seven Some people died inside cars and I saw two soldiers lying on the ground. We immediately closed the area. The bombing was reminiscent of the violence that regularly targeted the Green Zone when it served as the American administrative headquarters in the years following the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003. In recent months insurgent groups, which had once been largely pacified, have stepped up attacks against the backdrop of a political crisis pitting Nouri al-Maliki, the Shia prime minister, against a number of Sunni rivals in his ruling coalition. Further straining sectarian tensions, the Iraqi vice president, Tareq al-Hashemi, was sentenced to death for murder a week ago after a trial conducted in absentia. The sentence coincided with a string of insurgent attacks across the country that killed 92 people on one of the deadliest days of the year. Al-Qaeda in Iraq claimed responsibility for the violence and promised "black days ahead." Until now the Green Zone has largely been spared the violence, although a mortar bomb exploded on its outskirts in March. A suicide bomber wounded two people in an attack on the Iraqi parliament, which lies inside the Green Zone, last November. But the insurgents are growing ever bolder, and in recent months have struck at highly-secured sites across the country, including a military base, a prison and the anti-terrorism directorate in Baghdad. Although the attack on the Green Zone was less deadly than many they have mounted this year, the insurgents will revel in the fact that they have struck a powerfully symbolic blow that will greatly unnerve Iraq's governing classes.