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After assurances by Trump, Bahrain mounts deadliest raid in years on opposition
An image provided by an activist shows Bahraini security forces during a raid on a sit-in demonstration on May 23. (AP)
ISTANBUL — A raid by forces in Bahrain against a pro-opposition stronghold has left at least five people dead and hundreds detained in one of the deadliest crackdowns since protests erupted in 2011 against the Persian Gulf nation’s Western-backed monarchy.
Bahrain’s Interior Ministry said it had carried out the raid on Tuesday in the village of Duraz and officers had come under attack, including from assailants wielding explosives, the state news agency said.
Opposition activists said that the police had targeted a peaceful sit-in outside the home of Bahrain’s leading Shiite cleric and that the dead included an environmental activist.
Protests and clashes have flared for years in the tiny but strategic island nation between the Sunni-led monarchy and Bahrain’s large Shiite population, which claims it suffers discrimination and other abuses. Bahrain hosts the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet.
In addition to the death toll in Tuesday’s raid, the timing was striking, coming two days after President Trump publicly assured the king of Bahrain that their relationship would be free of the kind of “strain” that had occurred in the past — an apparent reference to periodic chiding of Bahrain by the Obama administration for human rights violations.
“Our countries have a wonderful relationship together, but there has been a little strain, but there won't be strain with this administration,” Trump said during a photo session with the king, Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, at a conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, according to the Reuters news agency.
Trump’s attendance at the Riyadh conference was in large part aimed at winning back Persian Gulf allies that had bristled at President Barack Obama’s outreach to Shiite power Iran.
Trump’s widely anticipated speech, ostensibly about Islam and extremism, included assurances to the Sunni Gulf states that “our friends will never question our support.”
In Bahrain, the government’s opponents viewed the conference and Trump’s appearance with the Bahraini monarch as providing tacit approval for the raid on Tuesday.
“The killing of five protesters is a heinous crime enabled by the unconditional support of the Bahraini rulers’ key allies in Riyadh, Washington and London,” Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei, director of advocacy at the London-based Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy, said in a statement on Wednesday.
“This bloodshed — the blood that’s on their hands — will only continue unless it is met with severe consequences from the international community.”
A State Department official told the AFP news agency that Washington was “concerned” by the reports of deaths during the raid. “We urge restraint on all sides,” the agency quoted the official as saying.
Bahrain’s Ministry of Information Affairs did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment about the identities of the victims, the circumstances of their deaths or the evolving U.S. relationship with Bahrain.
Bahrain’s Shiite majority has long complained of widespread discrimination at the hands of the Sunni dynasty ruling the country.
Political life and sectarian relations have steadily deteriorated since the government, with help from Persian Gulf allies, quashed a Shiite-led pro-democracy uprising in 2011. Since then, Bahrain’s most prominent opposition figures have fled the country, been imprisoned or are facing prosecution.
Bahrain’s government has accused Iran of stirring unrest in the country and increasingly aiding violent attacks against its security agents.
After the raid, Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, denounced Bahrain and the U.S. for the raid on Twitter, calling it the “First concrete result of POTUS cozying up to despots in Riyadh: Deadly attack on peaceful protesters by emboldened Bahrain regime. Google it.”
An image provided by an activist shows Bahraini security forces during a raid on a sit-in demonstration on May 23. (AP)
ISTANBUL — A raid by forces in Bahrain against a pro-opposition stronghold has left at least five people dead and hundreds detained in one of the deadliest crackdowns since protests erupted in 2011 against the Persian Gulf nation’s Western-backed monarchy.
Bahrain’s Interior Ministry said it had carried out the raid on Tuesday in the village of Duraz and officers had come under attack, including from assailants wielding explosives, the state news agency said.
Opposition activists said that the police had targeted a peaceful sit-in outside the home of Bahrain’s leading Shiite cleric and that the dead included an environmental activist.
Protests and clashes have flared for years in the tiny but strategic island nation between the Sunni-led monarchy and Bahrain’s large Shiite population, which claims it suffers discrimination and other abuses. Bahrain hosts the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet.
In addition to the death toll in Tuesday’s raid, the timing was striking, coming two days after President Trump publicly assured the king of Bahrain that their relationship would be free of the kind of “strain” that had occurred in the past — an apparent reference to periodic chiding of Bahrain by the Obama administration for human rights violations.
“Our countries have a wonderful relationship together, but there has been a little strain, but there won't be strain with this administration,” Trump said during a photo session with the king, Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, at a conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, according to the Reuters news agency.
Trump’s attendance at the Riyadh conference was in large part aimed at winning back Persian Gulf allies that had bristled at President Barack Obama’s outreach to Shiite power Iran.
Trump’s widely anticipated speech, ostensibly about Islam and extremism, included assurances to the Sunni Gulf states that “our friends will never question our support.”
In Bahrain, the government’s opponents viewed the conference and Trump’s appearance with the Bahraini monarch as providing tacit approval for the raid on Tuesday.
“The killing of five protesters is a heinous crime enabled by the unconditional support of the Bahraini rulers’ key allies in Riyadh, Washington and London,” Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei, director of advocacy at the London-based Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy, said in a statement on Wednesday.
“This bloodshed — the blood that’s on their hands — will only continue unless it is met with severe consequences from the international community.”
A State Department official told the AFP news agency that Washington was “concerned” by the reports of deaths during the raid. “We urge restraint on all sides,” the agency quoted the official as saying.
Bahrain’s Ministry of Information Affairs did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment about the identities of the victims, the circumstances of their deaths or the evolving U.S. relationship with Bahrain.
Bahrain’s Shiite majority has long complained of widespread discrimination at the hands of the Sunni dynasty ruling the country.
Political life and sectarian relations have steadily deteriorated since the government, with help from Persian Gulf allies, quashed a Shiite-led pro-democracy uprising in 2011. Since then, Bahrain’s most prominent opposition figures have fled the country, been imprisoned or are facing prosecution.
Bahrain’s government has accused Iran of stirring unrest in the country and increasingly aiding violent attacks against its security agents.
After the raid, Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, denounced Bahrain and the U.S. for the raid on Twitter, calling it the “First concrete result of POTUS cozying up to despots in Riyadh: Deadly attack on peaceful protesters by emboldened Bahrain regime. Google it.”
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