Region

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Palestinian fighters in the Gaza Strip fired seven rockets into Israel on Monday but caused no casualties, the army said.

It said the projectiles fell in the Negev region of southern Israel, with two of them targeting the town of Sderot.

Police said in a statement that a road in a residential neighbourhood of Sderot was slightly damaged.

Gaza security sources said Israeli aircraft retaliated with strikes on open ground near the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip and against a base of the Hamas military wing at Khan Younis, further south.

The Israeli navy also fired at the Khan Younis base, they said, adding that altogether two people were lightly injured.

An Israeli military statement said aircraft attacked “two terror activity sites in the southern Gaza Strip and a third site in the central Gaza Strip, in response to the latest severe aggression emanating from Gaza. Direct hits were confirmed”.

It made no mention of naval action.

A Palestinian security source said Hamas evacuated its bases for fear of further air raids.

An Israeli army statement said that prior to the rocket barrage, militants fired an anti-tank missile at an army patrol on the border fence but caused no injuries or damage.

The attacks came during a public holiday in Israel marking the last day of the Jewish festival of Passover.

GAZA CITY — A senior Cairo-based Hamas official crossed Monday from Egypt into the Gaza Strip ahead of a new attempt to reconcile the Islamist movement and its Palestine Liberation Organisation rivals.

Musa Abu Marzouk, head of external affairs in the movement’s political office, was seen entering the Hamas-ruled coastal strip through the Rafah frontier crossing.

A delegation of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, which is headed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and dominated by his Fateh movement, is to go to Gaza from the West Bank on Tuesday for talks with Hamas, members said.

Independent Palestinian MP Mustafa Barghuthi told AFP that his fellow delegates were Fateh’s Azzam Al Ahmad, Bassam Al Salhi of the socialist Palestine People’s Party, businessman Munib Al Masri and Arab Palestinian Front leader Jamil Shehadeh.

Barghuthi said the sides would discuss “forming a national consensus government and holding elections”, among other issues.

Hamas’ Gaza interior ministry said 10 Fateh members imprisoned for “breaches of public order” were freed on Monday “as a goodwill gesture to support national reconciliation efforts”.

Immediately upon his arrival, Abu Marzouk met with Gaza Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, the premier’s office said.

Longtime tensions between Hamas and Fateh boiled over in a week of fighting in 2007 that left the Islamist movement in control of Gaza and effectively divided the Palestinian territories into two.

The two sides have made repeated attempts to heal the rift, including an Egyptian-brokered deal in 2011 in which they agreed to make way for an interim government of independents to organise fresh elections throughout the territories.

The agreement has never been implemented.

Hamas’ fortunes have slipped since July 2013 when the Egyptian army deposed the movement’s ally, president Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, although Abu Marzuq is still based in Cairo.

The Hamas leadership in exile left its Damascus headquarters last year, with its political chief Khaled Mishaal moving to Qatar.

The Egyptian militant group Ajnad Misr claimed responsibility on Saturday for a blast that killed one police officer in Cairo, Reuters reported.

The bomb exploded in Cairo’s Lebanon Square on Friday night, killing the officer and wounding another.

Ajnad Misr, or Soldiers of Egypt, said in a statement on an Islamist website that its militants had monitored a police checkpoint in the square before detonating the bomb.

The group formally announced itself in January saying it would target “criminal elements” in the military-backed government.

It has claimed at least six attacks since then, including explosions outside Cairo University which killed a police brigadier-general and one other person earlier this month.

Islamist militants have stepped up attacks on members of the security forces, killing hundreds, since the army toppled Egypt’s first freely elected president Mohamed Morsi in July.

The insurgency threatens national security ahead of a presidential election in May, as well as the vital tourist industry.

Al Qaeda leader Ayman Al Zawahri gave his blessing, in a recording released on an Islamist website on Friday night, to Jihadists in carrying out attacks against the army and security forces in Egypt. Al Qaeda is not believed to be linked to Ajnad Misr.

Meanwhile, Egyptian leftist Hamdeen Sabbahi Saturday submitted the documents required to run in next month’s presidential election, in which he is likely to be the only rival to former army chief Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, Agence France-Presse reported.

Sabbahi is currently Sisi’s sole challenger after lawyer Mortada Mansour announced he was withdrawing his candidacy, although there is another day before the expected end of the registration period.

Sisi, who is riding a wave of popularity after ousting Islamist president Mohamed Morsi last July amid massive street protests, is widely expected to win the May 26-27 election.

“With God’s will, we will wage a great and victorious battle,” Sabbahi told supporters after submitting his candidacy to the electoral commission.

Sabbahi has surpassed the 25,000 signatures from citizen supporters required to officially register his candidacy, gathering 31,100 signatures from 17 provinces, according to his campaign team.

Sabbahi was accompanied by scores of supporters, who cheered him on and chanted: “Sabbahi is the symbol of freedom!”

They carried boxes containing the signed forms to be delivered to the electoral committee.

A longtime opposition figure jailed during the rule of strongman Hosni Mubarak and his predecessor Anwar Sadat, Sabbahi came in third in Egypt’s first free presidential election in 2012, a year after Mubarak was toppled by an Arab Spring-inspired uprising.

Controversial lawyer Mortada Mansour also announced he was withdrawing from the presidential race and would support Sisi’s candidacy.

Mansour is known as a harsh critic of the activists who led the 2011 revolt against Mubarak.

The former judge, who heads Cairo’s Zamalek football club, said his decision came in answer to the club members’ will and after a “vision” in which he saw himself sitting in a bus with two military officers who told him “we are going to the new Egypt”.

Sisi officially submitted his bid for the presidency on Monday, with his lawyer handing over the required documents. His campaign team said they submitted around 200,000 signatures to the electoral committee.

Critics of Sisi fear his election would mark a return to the autocratic rule of the Mubarak era, citing the military-installed authorities’ crackdown on Morsi’s supporters and the jailing of prominent activists from the 2011 uprising for organising unauthorised protests.

Sisi has dismissed such fears, and his supporters view him as a strong leader who can stabilise the economically-battered country after three years of turmoil.

The electoral commission is to announce the final field of candidates on May 2, and official campaigning starts a day later.

SANAA — A drone strike Saturday killed 15 Al Qaeda suspects and three civilians in Yemen’s central Baida province, a stronghold of the extremist group, a security official said.

The jihadists were travelling in a vehicle towards the southern Shabwa province, witnesses said. The three civilians were passing by in another car.

The United States is the only country that operates drones in Yemen, but officials rarely discuss the covert programme.

Last month, Yemen’s President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi defended the use of drones against Al Qaeda in his country, which has killed dozens of militants in a sharply intensified campaign over the past year.

Drone strikes “have greatly helped in limiting Al Qaeda activities, despite some mistakes, which we are sorry about,” Hadi told the pan-Arab daily Al Hayat.

The drone programme has come under criticism from human rights activists concerned over civilian casualties.

The United Nations said 16 civilians were killed and at least 10 wounded when two separate wedding processions were targeted in December.

The victims had been mistakenly identified as Al Qaeda members, it quoted local security officials as saying at the time.

Following the deaths, Yemen’s parliament voted for a ban on drone strikes, but analysts say lawmakers are unlikely to be able to halt the US campaign.

The US has defended the drone campaign, which allows it to target Al Qaeda without the use of ground forces in lawless areas where authorities cannot or will not act against the group.

Militants regularly attack security forces from hideouts in the mountainous terrain of Baida.

On Tuesday, Al Qaeda suspects shot dead the province’s vice governor and an intelligence officer.

Tribal ources in the region claim a recent video of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula chief Nasser Al Wuhayshi welcoming 19 militants who escaped a Sanaa prison was filmed between Shabwa and Baida.

Addressing scores of jihadists in the rare video appearance, Wuhayshi pledged to pursue the war against Western “crusaders” everywhere possible.

In the February jailbreak, AQAP militants slammed a car bomb into the eastern gate of a Sanaa prison as others attacked the guards at its main entrance. The attack allowed 29 inmates to escape, including the 19 jihadists.

Yemen is the ancestral home of Osama Bin Laden and the home base of AQAP, which has been linked to a number of failed attacks on the US homeland.

The group has taken advantage of the weakening of Yemen’s central government since 2011, when a popular uprising erupted that eventually forced president Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down after 33 years in power.

TEHRAN — Iran’s dispute with world powers over its unfinished Arak heavy water reactor has been “virtually resolved”, it said Saturday, less than a month before nuclear talks seeking a permanent agreement.

The facility — whose remaining components Iran cannot commission or install under an interim agreement struck in November — is of international concern as it could theoretically give Tehran a second route to a nuclear bomb.

Nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi said Iran and the so-called P5+1 group of world powers were now seeing eye to eye on the Arak reactor after Tehran offered to make certain changes.

“Our proposal [is] to redesign the Arak reactor and to reduce its plutonium production to one-fifth,” Salehi said in remarks posted in Arabic on the website of Iran’s Al Alam television.

“It was welcomed by the P5+1... the issue is virtually resolved,” he added without elaborating.

Western governments have monitored the small research reactor with alarm in the past few years over concerns Tehran could theoretically extract weapons-grade plutonium from its spent fuel if it also builds a reprocessing facility.

Located 240 kilometres southwest of Tehran, the reactor has been plagued by a series of delays, however, and its stated completion date of 2014 is expected to slip back even further.

But a year after it eventually comes on line, it could provide Iran with an alternative to highly enriched uranium for use in a nuclear bomb.

With Tehran insisting the reactor would create isotopes for medical and agricultural use, it has also made efforts in recent months to allay relating concerns by agreeing to submit to the UN nuclear watchdog updated design information and finalise a safeguards mechanism for it.

‘Centrifuge increase’ 

Tehran has been engaged in negotiations with the P5+1 — UN Security Council permanent members Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States, plus Germany — aimed at clinching a lasting accord on its nuclear ambitions.

The parties in the talks, which resumed when self-declared moderate Hassan Rouhani took office as Iranian president in August, have not disclosed details about their content.

On Saturday Salehi alluded to another issue being dealt with at the negotiating table, saying a separate Iran-initiated proposal sought to allow the country to keep its current centrifuges.

“They will remain at the current number of 20,000 for four or five years,” he said. “After that, we will gradually increase them to reach a capacity of enriching 30 tonnes of uranium per year.”

He did not say how the other parties to the talks responded to the proposal.

US negotiators are thought to be demanding that in addition to the Arak changes and more access being given to UN inspectors, Iran must drastically slash its number of centrifuges.

The Islamic republic has installed 20,000 centrifuges, but only about 9,000 of the machines which enrich uranium by spinning it at supersonic speed are active.

A lasting deal aims to once and for all alleviate Western concerns that Iran is seeking nuclear arms and also remove crippling sanctions that have left its economy in a shambles.

Such an agreement, elusive for the past decade, is inching towards reality with all sides agreeing to start drafting it when they meet again in Vienna on May 13, building on the historic interim accord that was limited to six months.

Their experts will meet for technical discussions from May 5 to 9 in New York, deputy foreign minister and top nuclear negotiators Abbas Araqchi said on Saturday.

According to the UN nuclear watchdog, Iran is strictly following the November deal, under which it pledged to “dilute” half of its highly enriched uranium by mid-April, with the rest to be converted by mid-July.

Salehi’s spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi said on Saturday that Tehran was committed to completing its remaining obligations by mid-July, when the interim deal runs out its course.

BAGHDAD — Rivalry between jihadist groups fighting in Syria has sharply divided global militant ranks once loosely allied under Al Qaeda, sparking infighting which experts say has hampered efforts to topple President Bashar Assad.

And while senior leaders of Al Qaeda were all but above question under revered founder Osama Bin Laden, the conflict has gone so far that even his replacement Ayman Zawahiri has come in for fierce criticism on jihadist forums online.

Powerful rebel groups in Syria, including Al Qaeda’s designated local affiliate Al Nusra Front, have been locked in fierce fighting with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), with thousands of people killed since January.

Jihadists were initially welcomed by other rebels battling to topple Assad since 2011.

But allegations of brutality towards civilians and rival fighters sparked a backlash and even accusations that they served Assad’s interests.

In a sign of how sharp the divisions have become, ISIL spokesman Abu Mohammed Al Adnani has accused Al Qaeda leaders of betraying the jihadist cause.

“Al Qaeda today is no longer a base of jihad [holy war],” Adnani said in a statement posted on jihadist forums, playing off the militant group’s name, which means “the base” in Arabic.

“Its leadership has become a hammer to break the project of the Islamic State,” Adnani said, adding that “the leaders of Al Qaeda have deviated from the correct path”.

“They have divided the ranks of the mujahedeen [holy warriors] in every place.”

In an interview with Al Qaeda-run media outlet released by the SITE monitoring service Saturday and dated between February and April, Zawahiri called for unity and suggested the Assad regime had penetrated jihadist ranks and sowed sedition.

“If I command you to fight your mujahedeen [holy warrior] brothers, do not obey me. If I command you to blow yourself up among your mujahedeen brothers, do not obey me,” he said.

Online, the clash among jihadists has seen criticism of Zawahiri from around the Islamic world, though others have defended Al Qaeda chief.

“Zawahiri has fallen... We will not listen to him any more. To the dustbin of history, oh Al Qaeda,” tweeted ISIL supporter Munassar Al Mumineen.

Ahmed, another Twitter user, attacked Zawahiri as “old” and called him “the Prince of the Khawarij” — those who have left the proper path of jihad.

Charles Lister, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Centre, said the dispute is ultimately over leadership of the jihadist movement in Syria and internationally.

“This continuing battle for influence between Al Nusra and ISIL has the potential to cause shock waves across the international jihadist community.

“The conflict in Syria has provided an enormous opportunity for jihadist groups, and with such a significant opportunity comes the possibility of divisions,” he added.

Alan Fraser, a Middle East and North Africa specialist with British risk consultancy AKE Group, said disputes among jihadists have happened before, including within Al Qaeda itself.

“Jihadist groups have always been prone to division and infighting, as there is generally a lot more at stake than just ideological issues,” he said.

“There have always been tensions between and within groups over the extent of their extremism and the lengths they will go to seek funding and to impose their beliefs on local populations.”

In the interview, Zawahiri said Al Qaeda remained focused on rallying Muslims for jihad against “America and its Crusader allies and the Zionists and their traitor agents.”

“Our method is to preserve blood and avoid operations that could potentially shed the blood of others unjustly in marketplaces, residential areas, and even among the jihadi groups,” he said, according to SITE.

Inside Syria, splits between jihadist groups ultimately play into Assad’s hands.

“It has played a significant role in dividing the opposition movement, as well as dividing opinion and the degree of support among those who had previously supported the uprising,” Fraser said.

Over the past year, the Syrian army, backed by Lebanese group Hizbollah, has achieved a series of victories, while rebel groups continue to suffer from a lack of supplies, the absence of a unified command structure and infighting.

Lina Khatib, director of the Carnegie Middle East Centre in Beirut, also said inter-jihadist conflict has harmed the rebel cause.

“Divisions have diverted certain groups’ energies away from fighting the Assad regime, as is the case of Al Nusra Front, which today is deeply involved in confrontations” with ISIL, Khatib said.

“The Assad regime is benefiting from infighting among jihadist groups, as they are doing the job for Assad.”

JEDDAH — Two foreigners died of MERS in the Saudi city of Jeddah, the health ministry said Saturday, as fears rise over the spreading respiratory virus in the kingdom’s commercial hub.

The ministry said five more people were infected with the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome in the western city, including two foreign medics aged 54.

The latest deaths of a 64-year-old and 44-year-old, whose nationalities were undisclosed, bring to 76 the overall number of people to have died of MERS in Saudi Arabia, from a total of 231 infections.

Panic over the spread of MERS among medical staff in Jeddah this month forced the temporary closure of a hospital emergency room, prompting Health Minister Abdullah Al Rabiah to visit the facility in a bid to calm the public.

On Wednesday, at least four doctors at the King Fahd Hospital reportedly resigned after refusing to treat MERS patients, apparently out of fear of infection.

MERS was initially concentrated in eastern Saudi Arabia but it now affects other areas.

The World Health Organisation said Thursday it had been told of 243 laboratory-confirmed cases of MERS infections worldwide, of which 93 have proved fatal.

The virus is considered a deadlier but less-transmissible cousin of the SARS virus that erupted in Asia in 2003 and infected 8,273 people, nine per cent of whom died.

Experts are still struggling to understand MERS, for which there is no known vaccine.

A recent study said the virus has been “extraordinarily common” in camels for at least 20 years, and may have been passed directly from the animals to humans.

PARIS — Four French journalists taken hostage in Syria last year were freed on Saturday after a 10-month ordeal in the world’s most dangerous country for the media.

French President Francois Hollande announced the release of Edouard Elias, Didier Francois, Nicolas Henin and Pierre Torres, saying they were “in good health despite the very challenging conditions of their captivity”.

Turkish soldiers found the four men abandoned in no-man’s land on the border with Syria overnight, wearing blindfolds and with their hands bound, the Turkish news agency Dogan reported.

They had been captured in two separate incidents in June last year while covering the conflict in Syria.

Footage of the journalists broadcast on Turkish television showed them looking unkempt, with beards and long hair, but they appeared to be in good health.

“I’m very happy to be free,” said 53-year-old Francois. “We thank the Turkish authorities because they really helped us. And it’s very nice to see the sky, to be able to walk and to be able to speak freely.”

The Turkish soldiers initially took them for smugglers but took them to a police station in the small town of Akcakle near the border when they realised they were speaking French.

Around 30 foreign journalists covering the Syrian civil war have been seized since the conflict began in March 2011, and many are still missing.

Hollande told AFP he had learnt of the liberation of the four Frenchmen “with immense relief”.

“I share the joy of the families of our compatriots who have endured... the fear of this trying time,” Hollande said.

Francois, a highly respected and experienced war reporter for Europe 1 radio, and photographer Elias, 23, were taken north of the main northern Syrian city of Aleppo on June 6.

Henin, a 37-year-old reporter for Point magazine, and freelance photographer Torres, 29, were seized two weeks later also in the north of the country, at Raqqa.

 ‘Morale good’ 

The four men will return to France early on Sunday, with their plane due to touch down at a military base outside Paris by 9:00am (0700 GMT), Hollande told AFP.

The ex-hostages will return to an immense outpouring of joy and relief from family and colleagues.

“We don’t know what to say, we are very happy obviously, but we are completely overwhelmed,” Elias’ grandmother Josette Dunand told AFP.

Henin’s father Pierre-Yves Henin told AFP the men were “about to get on a plane to come back”, and that their morale was “particularly good”.

He told BFM-TV the family had been aware of recent “contacts”, and had hoped they would “prove fruitful”, but that the news that his son was free was nonetheless a surprise.

The head of Europe 1 Denis Olivennes described emotional scenes in the office.

“It is an immense joy, we are in tears,” he said. “We have endured 10 months of terrible anxiety and anguish. Now they are freed, I have no words to describe how it feels.”

There had been some indication that a release was possible in recent days.

“We were told a few days ago that they had a window of opportunity, but we have learned not to get our hopes up,” said Fabien Namias, chief executive of Europe 1.

“For some time, we had regular news every three weeks that they were being held together, not isolated, that they had not been treated too badly. And they are in good health — that’s the main thing.”

The four men’s liberation comes weeks after two Spanish journalists taken hostage in Syria by an Al Qaeda-linked group called the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant also walked free.

El Mundo correspondent Javier Espinosa, 49, and freelance photographer Ricardo Garcia Vilanova, 42, were released and handed over to the Turkish military last month.

They had been in captivity since September.

Thanking “all those who contributed to the successful outcome”, the French president said the men would return to France “in the coming hours”.

He reaffirmed his “deep commitment to the freedom of the press, which demands respect for the security and integrity of journalists in their role of providing information”.

Hollande said his attention was now with two other French citizens still held in the Sahel region of Africa, reaffirming his determination to obtain their release.

Among those still being held in Syria are US journalist James Foley, who had been working for Global Post, Agence France-Presse and other international media and went missing in November 2012, and Austin Tice, who disappeared in August the same year.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said in a report Wednesday that Syria was the most dangerous country for journalists, highlighting a rising number of “targeted killings” of reporters.

ALGIERS — A day after Algeria’s ailing President Abdelaziz Bouteflika won a fourth term, many young people in the oil-rich nation wonder if the next generation will ever have a chance to rule.

Results announced on Friday by Interior Minister Tayeb Belaiz showed that Bouteflika, 77, won 81.53 per cent of the votes in an election marred by low turnout and opposition claims of fraud.

His landslide came despite him not even campaigning in person for polling day on Thursday, when he made his first public appearance since May 2012 to vote from a wheelchair.

“Bouteflika is obsessed by the desire to rule. His generation will never agree to pull back and make room for younger people,” said Kamel, a 36-year-old opposition MP.

“His promise to pass the torch [to the next generation] is nothing but hot air,” he added.

Bouteflika’s campaign manager Abdelmalek Sellal told AFP before the vote that the president was determined to see young people play a more efficient role in the nation’s affairs.

Algeria has a population of around 38.5 million people, three quarters of whom are younger than 35, and yet the key leaders in Africa’s largest country are in their 70s.

Although Bouteflika remains very popular with many Algerians for helping to end a devastating civil war in the 1990s, many others have been clamouring for change.

High youth unemployment — 21.5 per cent of under 35s are jobless, according to the International Monetary Fund — widespread corruption and sectarian unrest have all been used as arguments by youths and the opposition to demand change.

Bouteflika’s main rival in the election, Ali Benflis, received just 12.18 per cent of the votes and has alleged fraud.

On Saturday, the 69-year-old said he will set up a new party in which young people will play a key role.

“Youths will have a major role in this project and in the future direction of the party,” an aide, Lotfi Boumghar, told AFP.

 ‘Hostage to continuity’ 

Analysts have warned of rising instability in Algeria over social problems and the government’s failure to address them.

They have also voiced fears that things will stagnate in Algeria because Bouteflika’s ill health means his cronies will continue to run the show.

“It is clear that Bouteflika’s re-election cements continuity” in Algeria, said analyst Rachid Grim.

Analyst Rachid Tlemcani agreed, adding: “Bouteflika is ill and cannot run the country. After his re-election, Algeria will be in the hands of the clan that took it hostage” in April 2013.

He was referring to Bouteflika suffering a mini-stroke last year when he had to be rushed to hospital in France and spent three months there before returning home.

But analysts have also said that Bouteflika must make good on his campaign promise of “a broad democracy” in which citizens take an active part.

The president “must revise the constitution”, said Tlemcani.

Zahia, 34, a doctor in a state-run hospital, said it will be a long time before the policies of the Bouteflika camp can be uprooted.

“There is no hope that the system which has been in place since independence [from France in 1962] will change during one term,” she said.

“It will take a long time to uproot it. Change should have started with the election of a man who is not so old and enjoys all his physical abilities. Bouteflika is old and ill.”

The Bouteflika camp is adamant that he will bring prosperity to Algeria during his fourth five-year term.

“He has moved Algeria to seventh heaven, eighth heaven even,” the interior minister said Friday after announcing Bouteflika’s victory.

Sellal, the former prime minister who resigned to run Bouteflika’s campaign, repeatedly called Bouteflika “a gift from God” who steered the country out of “darkness and into the light”.

Oran newspaper lamented on Saturday: “Bouteflika-ism has won” and “we lost the chance for a transition... we pushed back the future”.

DUBAI — Two people were killed Saturday when their car exploded in a Shiite village in Bahrain, the interior ministry said, although it was unclear whether the vehicle itself had been targeted.

A third person was wounded in the blast and taken to hospital as civil defence personnel were hurt in a separate explosion, the ministry said.

An uprising against the ruling Sunni dynasty in the Shiite majority kingdom began in 2011, and protesters still clash regularly with police.

“Two burned bodies and one injured person were found” in a “civilian” car that exploded in the Shiite village of Mughsha, the interior ministry said.

“Initial investigations have shown that the blast was caused by explosive devices inside the car,” the official BNA news agency cited the ministry as saying.

No further details were given on whether the vehicle it had been targeted directly or whether the blast had been accidental.

Witnesses said they heard a loud bang shortly before the car was gutted by fire, and that authorities cordoned off the area.

In another Shiite town, Al Quraya, “a homemade bomb” exploded, wounding several members of the civil defence force “who were in the process of extinguishing burning tyres”.

“Three civil defence members sustained multiple injuries and were admitted to hospital for treatment and several others were treated on site for minor injuries,” an English-language statement said.

Witnesses in Al Quraya told AFP that protesters against the ruling Al Khalifa dynasty set tyres alight at the entrance to the village.

Bahrain remains deeply divided three years after the Shiite-led uprising, with persistent protests sparking clashes with police, scores of Shiites jailed on “terror” charges and reconciliation talks deadlocked.

Last year, the authorities increased the penalties for those convicted of violence, introducing the death penalty or life sentences in certain cases.

The International Federation for Human Rights says that at least 89 people have been killed in Bahrain since February 2011.