11 June 2011 - 19:30

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) says it will make every effort to decrease the impacts of the violent crackdowns of the Bahraini regime on peaceful anti-regime protesters.

(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - “We reassure that the International Committee of the Red Cross will make every effort, from a humanitarian perspective, to help decrease the repercussions of the status quo in Bahrain and to hold negotiations with [Bahraini] authorities regarding humanitarian concerns,” President of the International Committee of the Red Cross Jacob Kellenberg wrote in a letter to head of Iran's Red Crescent Society (IRCS), according to a statement by the IRCS.

Kellenberg's letter was in response to an earlier letter by head of IRCS Abolhassan Faqih, who had urged the International Committee of the Red Cross to dispatch immediate humanitarian aid to the Bahraini people.

Faqih had also announced Iran's readiness to send humanitarian aid as well as medical teams and equipment to crisis-hit Bahrain to treat the Bahraini people who have been injured during the government crackdown on protesters.

The ICRC chief also thanked Iran for sharing its concerns over the humanitarian conditions in Bahrain with the ICRC, and said the international committee would consider the Islamic Republic in providing humanitarian aid to Bahrain.

Anti-government protests against the rule of the Al Khalifa dynasty in Bahrain began in mid-February. Since then, the Manama regime has unleashed a massive brutal crackdown on anti-government protesters.

On March 14, Saudi Arabia deployed troops to Bahrain at Manama's request to help crush the nationwide anti-government protests in the Persian Gulf sheikdom.

Scores of people have been killed and many more arrested and tortured in prisons in the Saudi-backed crackdown on protests in Bahrain -- a longtime ally of the US and home to a huge military base of the US Navy's Fifth Fleet.

End item/ 149