Clashes between police and Shiites erupt anew in Bahrain
The Associated Press
Thursday, December 20, 2007
MANAMA, Bahrain: Clashes erupted Thursday for the third time this week between angry young Shiite Bahrainis and security forces following the wake for a man who died earlier after a confrontation with police.
At least four people were injured in Thursday’s violence, according to the Bahrain International Hospital in the capital Manama.
Clashes between police and Shiites erupt anew in Bahrain
The Associated Press
Thursday, December 20, 2007
MANAMA, Bahrain: Clashes erupted Thursday for the third time this week between angry young Shiite Bahrainis and security forces following the wake for a man who died earlier after a confrontation with police.
At least four people were injured in Thursday’s violence, according to the Bahrain International Hospital in the capital Manama.
The clashes began in the afternoon when mourners at the wake of Ali Jassem, the man who died Monday after inhaling tear gas at another demonstration, discovered a plainclothes security man in their midst and attacked him, forcing him to flee.
Riot police then entered the small Shiite village of Jedhafs in the northern tip of the small island and attacked the 1,500 mourners, said Mohammed al-Mokhareq, a photographer for a local media who ended up in the hospital after passing out from tear gas inhalation.
“They were firing indiscriminately with rubber bullets and tear gas,” he said from his hospital bed. Also in the hospital was a man shot by a rubber bullet, another wounded in the face by police buckshot and one in serious condition after being struck by a security vehicle.
Protesters did manage to set one police vehicle on fire.
Authorities, however, described the demonstration as an unruly mob bent on destroying public property requiring the intervention of security forces.
“Some 500 men gathered in Jedhafs region, then marched to a main street and started to smash and sabotage public property and private possessions and set fire to trash cans, blocked the main road and then set fire to the market,” said a statement by the police chief of the northern province.
The Interior Ministry accused protesters of hurling Molotov cocktail bottles and stones at security forces and seriously injuring one policeman, stealing his weapon and setting fire to his car.
“The ministry confirms that it is determined to confront any illegal actions,” the ministry said in its own statement.
Abdul-Jalil al-Singace, spokesman of the Islamist Haq Movement for Liberty and Democracy organization, however, predicted that the death on Monday will spark off a whole new series of protests by Shiites like those that rocked the country in the 1990s and resulted in 40 deaths.
“Jassem’s death is the spark and a beginning for a new Intifada,” he told the Associated Press by phone from London.
“There will be a series of protests against Jassem death and to highlight the regime human rights violations,” he added, noting that the number of wounded in the current clashes could be much higher because many avoid the hospitals out of fear of the police.
The firing of rubber bullets and occasional explosions were heard for a few hours after nightfall in the villages while helicopters clattered overhead. Riot police sealed off all access to the area, including to ambulances.
The clashes began Monday on Bahrain’s national day marking the coronation of the king and continue into the Eid al-Adha, the most important Muslim holiday of the entire year and normally a joyous time.
Several events marking the holidays, including a popular play, were canceled and tourists from neighboring Saudi Arabia could be seen heading home early back across the causeway connecting the two countries.
Monday’s demonstration was to mark the death 10 years earlier of a man during another round of Shiite protests over discrimination and marginalization that continue to roil this small Persian Gulf kingdom.
The Interior Ministry maintains that Jassem died Monday of “natural causes” rather than due to any police action.
Shiite Arabs, who make up a majority of the population in Bahrain, have waged an occasionally violent campaign against perceived discrimination by the ruling Sunni family.
The kingdom is a close U.S. ally. The oil-refining and banking island also hosts the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet.