After allowing several days of rallies by disaffected Shiites, the island nation's Sunni rulers unleashed riot police who stormed a protest encampment in Pearl Square before dawn, firing tear gas, beating demonstrators or blasting them with shotgun sprays of birdshot. Along with two who died in clashes with police Monday, the new killings brought the death toll this week in Bahrain to seven. "People were attacked while they were sleeping. There was no warning," Nazea Saeed, a journalist with Radio Monte Carlo, said. "And when they ran, the police attacked them from the direction they fled to."
Volunteer doctors, who had set up a medical tent near the protest site, were also assaulted. One medical consultant was severely beaten and but then released because the police didn't want him to die in in the public square.
Al-Jazeera is also reporting that clashes were no longer limited to the Pearl roundabout-- that they are now spread out in different parts of the city. Speaking to Al Jazeera from Salmaniya hospital, the main medical facility in Manama, Maryama Alkawaka of Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, said that she saw dozens of injured demonstrators being wheeled into emergency rooms across the city. Booms could be heard from different parts of the city, suggesting that "tear-gas is being used to disperse the protesters in several neighborhoods".
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