MANAMA (Reuters) – Bahraini security forces fired on protesters today, wounding more than 60, as crackdowns on pro-democracy unrest buffeting the Middle East and North Africa turned increasingly violent.
While millions of Egyptians staged a “Victory March” feting their overthrow of autocrat Hosni Mubarak last week after 30 years, protesters elsewhere, inspired by their success, pursued struggles against their own authoritarian rulers.
The bloodshed near Pearl Square in the Bahraini capital Manama occurred a day after police forcibly swept away a protest camp from the traffic circle in the city, killing 4 people and wounding more than 230.
At least two people were killed in Yemen when security forces and pro-government loyalists clashed with crowds demanding an end to President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s 32-year rule.
In Libya, soldiers fought to suppress disturbances in the country’s second city Benghazi, while opposition groups said they were fighting troops for control of a nearby town after security swoops in which US-based Human Rights Watch said at least 24 protesters were killed on Wednesday and Thursday.
The spreading contagion of unrest — particularly worries about its possible effects on the world No. 1 oil producer Saudi Arabia — helped drive Brent crude prices to a 28-month high of $104 a barrel on Thursday.
It was a factor in gold prices extending early gains to five-week highs. By yesterday afternoon, Brent was just over $102 a barrel in London.
In Bahrain, Ali Ibrahim, deputy chief of medical staff at Salmaniya hospital, said 66 had been admitted suffering wounds from the clash in Pearl Square in the capital. Four were in a critical condition.
The injuries were worse than those seen on Thursday, he said.
Sayed Hadi, of the Wefaq bloc which quit parliament on Thursday, said demonstrators marking the death of a protester killed earlier this week had made for Pearl Square, where soldiers opened fire. Police had no comment.
Fakhri Abdullah Rashed said he had seen soldiers shooting at protesters in Pearl Square. “I saw people shot in several parts of their body. It was live bullets,” the protester added.
About 1,000 emotional people gathered outside a hospital, some spilling into the corridors as casualties were brought in, including one with a bloody sheet over his head. Some men wept.
The violence coincided with an appeal for calm and dialogue from the crown prince, Sheikh Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa. “I respect Wefaq, as I respect others. Today is the time to sit down and hold a dialogue, not to fight,” he said on Bahrain TV.
Bahrain’s most revered Shi’ite cleric, Sheikh Issa Qassem, described the police attack as a “massacre” and said the government had shut the door to dialogue, but stopped short of calling openly for street protests.
It was the worst bloodshed in the Saudi-allied Gulf island kingdom in decades and underlined the jitters of its Sunni royal family, long aware of simmering discontent among the majority Shi’ites.
In a loyalist demonstration in Manama, hundreds of pro-government supporters, waving flags and pictures of the king, streamed through the streets, local TV footage showed.
The army in Bahrain, a country of 1.3 million people of whom 600,000 are native Bahrainis, had issued a warning to people to stay away from the centre of the capital.
Bahrain hosts the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet which projects US military muscle across the Middle East and Central Asia, and the tension could fuel discontent among the Shi’ite minority in neighbouring Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter.
In Yemen, a protester was shot dead as police tried to scatter crowds in the southern port of Aden, witnesses said. Another was killed and seven wounded when a grenade was thrown from a car into a crowd in Taiz, south of the capital Sanaa.
Tens of thousands of anti-government protesters thronged Taiz, where pro-government crowds also turned out, and there were smaller rival demonstrations in Sanaa.
Saleh, a US ally against a Yemen-based al Qaeda wing which has launched attacks at home and abroad, is struggling to defuse protests demanding political change and jobs.
In Libya, whose once-ostracized leader Muammar Gaddafi has tried to mend relations with the West, the authorities have cracked down hard. Foes of Gaddafi, leader of the North African country for more than 40 years, had designated Thursday a day of protest to try to emulate uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia.
In the early hours of yesterday, Gaddafi appeared briefly in Green Square in the center of Tripoli where he was surrounded by supporters, but did not speak.
Two Swiss-based Libyan exile groups said anti-government forces joined by defecting police had seized control of the city of Al Bayda, 200 km (125 miles) northeast of Benghazi and site of deadly clashes in recent days.
Later, both the Libyan Human Rights Solidarity and Libyan Committee for Truth and Justice groups, citing contacts in the city, said government militias were trying to retake Al Bayda, with residents fighting back with any weapons they could find.
The reports could not be independently verified.
The funerals of those killed were expected in Benghazi and al Bayda yesterday and could act as catalyst for further unrest.
