Witnesses: Riot police clash with demonstrators in Bahrain

CNN

(CNN) — Riot police clashed Friday in suburbs across Bahrain’s capital of Manama with thousands of demonstrators enraged at the government’s denial of responsibility in the death of a 14-year-old boy, a human rights advocate in the Arab nation said.

Nabeel Rajab, president of Bahrain’s Center for Human Rights, told CNN that people took to the streets Thursday night and remained into early Friday. There, they voiced anger to several government messages, including a press release that was issued earlier Thursday from Bahrain’s interior ministry that — citing a coroner’s report — denied the boy was killed by a tear-gas canister or rubber bullet, as activists have claimed.

Riot police tossed tear gas canisters and shot rubber bullets in hopes of breaking up the protest, according to Rajab, who said he witnessed the clashes in one Manama suburb and also spoke to multiple eyewitnesses.

Journalist Mazen Mahdi added that he witnessed a similar crackdown in Sanabis, another suburb of the capital, and saw security forces sealing off the area.

In response, protesters set up make-shift barricades and threw stones at riot police in an attempt them to stop from going further into residential parts of the suburbs.

« Security forces raided homes and fired shots into Shiite suburbs as a form of collective punishment, » said Rajab. « It is a common tactic they use to stop youth from demonstrating against the regime. »

The clashes resulted in several injuries and dozens or arrests, according to Rajab, adding that the Center for Human Rights had not been able to ascertain exact numbers in either case. Read more...

~ par Alain Bertho sur 3 septembre 2011.

Publié dans émeutes, riots, الشغب