Riot police storms Bahrain protest camp

Bahrain - 17 Feb 2011: Six people were killed in Bahrain as riot police unleashed rubber bullets and tear gas to drive panicked protesters out of a square in the capital, Manama, the opposition said yesterday.

''They attacked the square, where hundreds of people were spending the night in tents,'' said one witness, Fadel Ahmad.

The protesters, including women and children, had been camping in the square and the atmosphere had been festive only hours before. Witnesses, some of them vomiting from the gas, said they had no warning of a crackdown before rows of police vehicles began to circle the area early yesterday.

At the city's main Salmaniya hospital, medical staff were overwhelmed as ambulances and private cars ferried in the injured more than three hours after the assault was launched.

Authorities in the island nation, home to the US Navy's Fifth Fleet, said they had no choice but to break up the demonstration.

''The security forces evacuated Pearl Square ... after having exhausted all chance of dialogue,'' Interior Ministry spokesman General Tariq al-Hassan said.

The latest deaths bring to four the number of demonstrators killed since the protests began on Monday.

Bahrain's Interior Minister, Sheikh Rashid bin Abdullah al-Khalifa, apologised yesterday for the first two deaths, saying that an investigation was under way.

Many protesters called for the government to provide more jobs and better housing, free political detainees and abolish a system that offers Bahraini citizenship to Sunnis from around the Middle East as a way to close the population gap with Shiites, who account for 70 per cent of the population in a country ruled by Sunnis.

In Libya, where Muammar Gaddafi has held power since a military coup in 1969, protesters demanding the government's overthrow clashed with security forces in the port city of Benghazi.

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has said that Iran is preparing to send two warships through the Suez Canal to Syria, calling it a ''provocation''.

Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak confirmed that Israel was following the ships' movements, but an aide said they were no cause for alarm.

''This is a provocation that proves the self-confidence and audacity of the Iranians are increasing from day to day,'' Mr Lieberman told visiting heads of US Jewish organisations.

- AGENCIES