Manama (Bahrain): Clashes erupted today for the third time this week between angry young Shiite Bahrainis and security forces following the wake for a man who died earlier after a confrontation with police.

At least four people were injured in today s violence, according to the Bahrain International Hospital in the capital Manama, and there were reports of additional wounded at other area hospitals.

The clashes began in the afternoon when mourners at the wake of Ali Jassem, the man who died on Monday after inhaling tear gas at another demonstration, discovered a plainclothes security man in their midst and attacked him, forcing him to flee.

Riot police then entered the small Shiite village in the northern tip of the small island and attacked the 1,500 mourners, said Mohammed al-Mokhareq, a photographer for a local media who ended up in the hospital after passing out from tear gas inhalation.

"They were firing indiscriminately with rubber bullets and tear gas," he said from his hospital bed. Also in the hospital was a man shot by a rubber bullet, another wounded in the face by police buckshot and one in serious condition after being struck by a security vehicle.

Protesters did manage to set one police vehicle on fire.

Abdul-Jalil al-Singace, spokesman of the Islamist Haq Movement for Liberty and Democracy organization, predicted that the death on Monday will spark off a whole new series of protests by Shiites like those that rocked the country in the 1990s and resulted in 40 deaths.

Source : PTI