Bahraini riot
police killed a teenager when they fired shotgun pellets during clashes
with protesters following a demonstration on Friday, the country’s
opposition said yesterday, the second young protester to die in six
weeks.
Security forces opened fire yesterday to disperse angry Shiite
protesters following the funeral of the youth. Several protesters were
wounded as police fired shotguns, as well as stun grenades, to disperse
protesters after thousands of mourners took part in the funeral of
17-year-old Ali Hussein Nemat in the village of Sadad, outside Manama,
witnesses said. Images posted online by Al-Wefaq Shiite opposition
showed thousands of men and black-clad women marching behind the coffin
of the teenage boy.
Thousands rallied on Friday in an officially authorised protest called
by the main opposition group Al-Wefaq, but as the event ended around 100
demonstrators clashed with police. Witnesses on Friday said riot police
used tear gas and stun grenades to disperse those demonstrators, who,
the authorities said, were throwing petrol bombs and wielding iron bars.
The police described the incident after the protest as a “terrorist
attack” on a security patrol that “targeted the lives of members of the
patrol” late on Friday evening. The police had defended themselves
“according to their legal authority”, a statement said, confirming one
of the protesters had died. Bahrain, headquarters of the US Navy’s Fifth
Fleet, has been in turmoil since mass demonstrations started at the
height of Arab Spring unrest last year, led by its Shiite majority. The
protests were put down by the Sunni monarchy which imposed martial law
and invited Saudi Arabia to send troops in support.
In mid-August a 16-year-old protester was killed in a similar incident,
when police opened fire with birdshot during clashes after a
demonstration, opposition activists said. The opposition says more than
45 people have been killed in protests since martial law was lifted in
June 2011. The Interior Ministry says protesters have injured more than
700 police officers and that the authorities have exercised restraint.
Al-Wefaq distributed photographs show a body covered in blood and
flecked with birdshot wounds. The pictures could not be independently
verified.
Bahrain and Saudi Arabia accuse Iran of fomenting the unrest in the
island kingdom and among Saudi Arabia’s Shiite minority, who mostly live
in a province situated next to Bahrain. Iran denies the accusations.
The death comes a day after the UN Human Rights Council appointed a
Bahraini as the Asia representative to its advisory committee.
Separately, a Saudi teenager has died of wounds sustained four days ago
in a police raid that killed a wanted Shiite man and a companion in
oil-rich Eastern Province, relatives said yesterday. Saudi authorities
informed the family of Hasan Zahiri, 16, that he succumbed to injuries,
the relatives said, raising the death toll of the attack on a house in
the Shiite village of Al-Awamiya to three. Security forces had tracked
down Khalid Al-Labad to a house in Al-Awamiya, in the Qatif district,
the interior ministry said on Wednesday. It said a gun battle erupted
when police attempted to arrest the man who figured on a list of 23
Shiites wanted in connection with unrest.
Labad and a comrade were shot dead, while “two of the gunmen with him
were wounded and a third was arrested”, the ministry said. Since early
2011, mainly Shiite towns in Eastern Province have seen sporadic
protests and confrontations between police and marginalised Shiites who
are estimated to number some two million in the Sunni-dominated kingdom.
Unrest erupted after an outbreak of violence between Shiite pilgrims
and religious police in the holy city of Madinah in Feb 2011.
The protests escalated when the kingdom led a force of Gulf troops into
neighbouring Bahrain the following month to help crush Shiite-led
pro-democracy protests against its Sunni-minority monarchy. Human rights
groups say more than 600 people have been arrested since spring 2011,
most of them in Qatif. The majority have since been released.
