(AhlulBayt News Agency) - Protests in some Shiite villages started as early as after morning prayers on Monday, eyewitnesses said. Checkpoints sealed off villages, while police units patrolled shopping malls and other public areas Sunday.
Bahrain is a small island kingdom, with little oil wealth, where Sunni rulers have struggled for years with a restive Shiite population. In recent days, the Shiite-led opposition has capitalized on regional unrest to renew its own calls for political reform.
Bahrain is the only Arab state so far in the oil-rich Persian Gulf to be beset by unrest amid protests across much of the Mideast. Popular demonstrations have unseated long-time rulers in Egypt and Tunisia, while massive demonstrations have erupted in Algeria, Jordan and Yemen.
Bahrain is of particular strategic important to the U.S. It's home to the U.S. Fifth Fleet, the American naval command in charge of patrolling the Persian Gulf and the surrounding region.
At the Pearl roundabout in Manama, cited by protesters as a possible place of protest, police manned each corner in a show of force.
In the Shiite village of Sitra, a few miles from the capital, armed riot police patrolled networks of side streets. Local men, women and children marched to protest immediately after morning prayers but were blocked before they reached a nearby highway, eye witnesses said.
Those who refused to disperse were shot at with tear gas, sound bombs and rubber bullets, with some exhibiting injuries, witnesses said.
Jafer Hassan, a 25-year-old man from Sitra, showed a wound on his leg he claimed was from a rubber bullet. "The police started shooting and I was hit.... But I will protest again this afternoon."
Bahraini authorities have said that security forces were only using proportionate force in skirmishes that started Sunday.
Abdul Wahab Hussain, a prominent opposition figure, attended the protest Monday then retreated to his house in Sitra, where he received locals in a room covered in posters of jailed activists.
"The number of riot police is huge, but we have shown using violence against us will only make us stronger... This is just the beginning—in the evening it will be in all areas of Bahrain," he said.
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