Bahrain launches surprise attack on protesters
Security forces in tiny but strategic Bahrain launched a brutal assault early Thursday against at least 1,000 defiant anti-government protesters, including women and children, camped out in tents in the capital's Pearl Square.
A barrage of tear gas canisters thundered across the square about 3 a.m. as dozens of police cars, armored security vehicles and ambulances converged on a makeshift tent city in the center of Manama that was beginning to resemble a smaller version of Tahrir Square in Cairo, where Egyptian protesters this month were successful in overthrowing their president.
Most of the protesters in Pearl Square were asleep when the assault began, witnesses said, noting that no steps had been taken to guard the area against the security forces, even though two people had been killed in earlier clashes with them.
Unlike the heavily nationalist revolts in Egypt and Tunisia, Bahrain's unrest is rooted in the discrimination felt by the impoverished Shiite Muslim majority at the hands of the governing Sunni Muslim royal family.
The island nation of nearly 800,000 people is also crucial to U.S. interests in the region: It hosts the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet.
The successful uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt have become models for a daily phenomenon in places such as Yemen and Bahrain. With new marches planned in several other countries over the next several days, including Morocco and Libya, governments from North Africa to the gulf were settling in for what looks to be an extended period of instability.
A barrage of tear gas canisters thundered across the square about 3 a.m. as dozens of police cars, armored security vehicles and ambulances converged on a makeshift tent city in the center of Manama that was beginning to resemble a smaller version of Tahrir Square in Cairo, where Egyptian protesters this month were successful in overthrowing their president.
Most of the protesters in Pearl Square were asleep when the assault began, witnesses said, noting that no steps had been taken to guard the area against the security forces, even though two people had been killed in earlier clashes with them.
Unlike the heavily nationalist revolts in Egypt and Tunisia, Bahrain's unrest is rooted in the discrimination felt by the impoverished Shiite Muslim majority at the hands of the governing Sunni Muslim royal family.
The island nation of nearly 800,000 people is also crucial to U.S. interests in the region: It hosts the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet.
The successful uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt have become models for a daily phenomenon in places such as Yemen and Bahrain. With new marches planned in several other countries over the next several days, including Morocco and Libya, governments from North Africa to the gulf were settling in for what looks to be an extended period of instability.
