(Adds details on other protests)
MANAMA, April 21 (Reuters) – Bahraini police fired teargas
to break up a protest in a Shi’ite district outside Manama on
Saturday, during Bahrain’s Formula One Grand Prix, and
protesters responded with petrol bombs.
“Protesters were at a roundabout in Diraz and police tried
to move them by firing teargas. They started throwing petrol
bombs back at them,” a Reuters witness said.
He said there were up to 150 protesters, who had taken part
in a march of several thousand earlier for democratic reforms
and against Formula One, and around 50 riot policemen in jeeps.
Demonstrators west of Manama took to the streets earlier in
a march called by opposition parties, holding banners for
democratic reforms in the Shi’ite-majority Gulf Arab state,
which is governed by the Sunni Muslim Al Khalifa family.
They held up a banner depicting Formula One race drivers as
riot police beating up protesters.
A protest by more than 15,000 people nearby on Friday also
ended in clashes with riot police as hundreds sought refuge from
teargas in a shopping mall and youths threw petrol bombs.
Police have stepped up their presence in the area because it
is adjacent to the main highway from Manama to the Formula One
race circuit. Some team members have run into clashes between
police and youths on the road.
The dead body of Salah Abbas Habib was found on Saturday
morning after he took part in clashes with police on Friday
night in a village near the highway.
On Saturday, police used teargas to stop hundreds of
protesters reaching a main road in al-Bilad al-Qadeem, a Shi’ite
neighbourhood of the Manama.
“They used rubber bullets, teargas and sound bombs,” said
Mohammed al-Maskati of the Bahrain Youth Society for Human
Rights. He said he had attended the march, held in protest
against the death of Habib who hailed from the neighbourhood.
(Reporting by Hamad Mohammed and Andrew Hammond; Writing by
Andrew Hammond in Dubai; Editing by Michael Roddy)
