Four die in Pearl Square Manama city Bahraini

Bahraini security forces fired on protesters, wounding at least 230 people were wounded on Friday near Pearl Square in the Bahraini capital, Manama, a day after police swept away a protest camp from the traffic circle in the city, killing four people and wounding more than 230.Bahrain, Ali Ibrahim, deputy chief of medical staff at Salmaniya hospital, said 66 people had been admitted suffering wounds from the clash in Pearl Square. Four were in critical condition.

"We think it was the army," former lawmaker Sayed Hadi said of the shootings. He is a member of Wefaq, the main bloc, which resigned from parliament on Thursday.Protester Fakhri Abdullah Rashed said he had seen soldiers shooting at demonstrators in Pearl Square. "I saw people shot in several parts of their body. It was live bullets," he 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.

King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa announced he had asked the crown prince to start a national dialogue "with all parties" to resolve the crisis rocking the island kingdom.Bahrain's most revered cleric, Sheikh Issa Qassem, described the police attack as a "massacre" and said the government had shut the door to dialogue. But he stopped short of calling openly for street protests.It was the worst bloodshed in the Gulf island kingdom in decades and underlined the jitters of its royal family, long aware of simmering discontent among the majority.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 center of the capital.Bahrain hosts the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet, which projects U.S. military muscle across the Middle East and Central Asia.
Media agencies