MANAMA, Feb 18, (Agencies): Bahraini security forces fired on protesters near Pearl Square on Friday and a senior medical official said more than 60 people were treated in hospital, a day after police forcibly cleared a protest camp in the capital. Ali Ibrahim, deputy chief of medical staff at Salmaniya hospital, said 66 wounded had been admitted from the clash at Pearl Square in the capital. Four were in a critical condition. The injuries were worse than those seen on Thursday, he said. Friday’s shooting occurred on a day of mourning when Shi’ites buried four people killed a day earlier in the police raid on the Pearl Square traffic circle. “We think it was the army,” former lawmaker Sayed Hadi said of Friday’s shooting. He is from Wefaq, the main Shi’ite bloc which resigned from parliament on Thursday.

The latest violence coincided with an appeal for calm and dialogue from the crown prince, Sheikh Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa. “I respect Wefaq, as I respect others. Today is the time to sit down and hold a dialogue, not to fight,” he said on Bahrain TV. About 1,000 emotional people gathered outside one hospital, some spilling into the corridors as casualties were brought in, including one with a bloody sheet over his head. Some men wept. Fakhri Abdullah Rashed said he had seen soldiers shooting at protesters in Pearl Square. “I saw people shot in several parts of their body. It was live bullets,” the protester added. Another Wefaq MP, Jalal Firooz, said demonstrators had been holding a memorial for a protester killed earlier this week when riot police fired tear gas at them. Police had no comment.

The crowd then made for Pearl Square, where army troops who took it over after the police raid opened fire, Firooz said. Four people were killed and 231 wounded when riot police raided the protest camp in the early hours of Thursday. Soldiers in tanks and armoured vehicles later took control of the square, which the mainly Shi’ite protesters had hoped to use as a base like Cairo’s Tahrir Square, the heart of protests that toppled Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Feb 11. Several thousand mourners turned out on Friday to bury those killed in what Bahrain’s top Shi’ite cleric called a “massacre” ordered by the island’s Sunni ruling family to crush protests. The unrest has presented the United States with a now familiar dilemma, torn between its desire for stability in a longstanding Arab ally and a need to uphold its own principles about the right of people to demonstrate for democratic change.

Revered cleric Sheikh Issa Qassem denounced the police attack on the square and said the authorities had shut the door to dialogue, but stopped short of calling for street protests. “The massacre was on purpose to kill and to hurt and not to clear any demonstration,” he said. People interrupted his Friday prayer sermon in the village of Diraz, shouting: “The people want the fall of the regime.”

GCC
The foreign ministers of the GCC member states voiced their countries’ political, economic, security and defensive support for Bahrain.
This came in a statement read out by Bahraini Foreign Minister Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmad Al Khalifa at a news conference following the GCC foreign ministers’ meeting.
The ministers emphasized that it is a shared responsibility to ensure security and stability on the basis of the integrated mass security principle, he said.
They also expressed the GCC member states’ opposition to foreign interference in Bahrain’s internal affairs, warning that “disrupting its security and stability is a serious violation of all the GCC countries’ security and stability.
However, they hailed the Bahraini King’s reforms aiming to shore up establishments and law and to buttress citizens’ legitimate rights.
The Bahraini minister reaffirmed that all the Bahraini people are loyal to their country.

Libya
Soldiers sought to put down unrest in Libya’s second city on Friday and opposition forces said they were fighting troops for control of a nearby town after crackdowns which Human Rights Watch said killed 27 people.
Protests inspired by the revolts that brought down long-serving rulers of neighbouring Egypt and Tunisia have led to violence unprecedented in Muammar Gaddafi’s 41 years as leader of the oil exporting country.
The New York-based rights group Human Rights Watch said that according to its sources inside Libya, security forces had killed at least 24 people over the past two days. Exile groups have given much higher tolls which could not be confirmed.
Opponents of Gaddafi had designated Thursday as a day of rage to try to emulate uprisings sweeping through North Africa and the Middle East. Unrest continued well into the night.
The demonstrations have been focused in the country’s east, including its second largest city, Benghazi, where support for Gaddafi has been historically weaker than in the rest of the country. The area is largely cut-off from international media.

“Last night was very hard, there were a lot of people in the street, thousands of people. I saw soldiers in the street,” a resident who lives on Benghazi’s main thoroughfare, Nasser Street, told Reuters.
“I heard shooting. I saw one person fall down (from a gunshot wound) but I don’t have a figure for casualties.”
The privately-owned Quryna newspaper, based in Benghazi, said security forces overnight fired live bullets at protesters, killing 14 of them. It published photographs of several people lying on hospital stretchers with bloodstained bandages.
Two Swiss-based exile groups said anti-government forces, joined by defecting police, were battling with security forces for control of the town of Al Bayda, 200 km (125 miles) northeast of Benghazi and scene of deadly clashes this week.

A opposition activist in Al Bayda told Reuters the town was calm after the burial of 14 people killed in Thursday’s protests. “A massacre took place here yesterday,” said the man. The death toll he gave could not be verified.
Ashour Shamis, a London-based Libyan journalist, said protesters had stormed Benghazi’s Kuwafiyah prison on Friday and freed dozens of political prisoners. Quryna said 1,000 prisoners had escaped and 150 had been recaptured.
The capital Tripoli has been calmer, with Gaddafi supporters staging demonstrations of their own. The leader appeared in the early hours of Friday briefly at Green Square in the centre of Tripoli, surrounded by crowds of supporters. He did not speak.
A sermon at Friday prayers in Tripoli, broadcast on state television, urged people to ignore reports in foreign media “which doesn’t want our country to be peaceful, which ... is the aim of Zionism and imperialism, to divide our country.”
Gaddafi’s opponents, using social media networks Facebook and Twitter, had called for new protests after Friday prayers, when most Libyan men visit the mosque.
A Benghazi resident told Reuters by telephone the city appeared to be calm after prayers but said local people were unsure what would happen following funerals of people killed in the protests.

Saudi
The protests and unrest in Arab countries may be dangerous for Saudi Arabia if King Abdullah does not step up the pace of reform, a Saudi prince said Thursday.
Prince Talal bin Abdul-Aziz, a half brother of the king, said it was not too late for the Saudi government to take steps to avoid protests — and that the king is the only person who can bring about major changes.
“The only person who could really maintain things and do major things and change is King Abdullah,” the prince told BBC Arabic in an interview. “Because he is not merely liked, but he is loved by the people. But if he doesn’t do it, it would be very dangerous in our country.”
Talal is an outspoken prince who has called for reform before. He holds no government posts and is considered something of an outsider within the royal family.
He was forced briefly into exile in the 1960s amid reports at the time that he planned a revolt.
Political activity in oil-rich Saudi Arabia, which follows strict Islamic rule, is severely restricted and all power rests in the hands of the ruling Saudi family.

The kingdom’s first political party was formed recently by moderate scholars calling for reform, following the turmoil in Egypt and Tunisia.
Authorities in Saudi Arabia have detained founding members of a new political party and told them they must withdraw demands for political reform as a condition for their release, the party said Friday.
The detainees refused to sign the pledge, said the Umma Islamic Party, which was formed earlier this month by 10 university professors, political activists and business people.
The Umma Islamic Party has urged the kingdom’s rulers to start a dialogue on reform, including improving the status of women.
In a statement e-mailed to The Associated Press, the party said all founding members were arrested Wednesday.
One of the founders, Sheik Mohammed bin Ghanim al-Qahtani, was quoted as saying he and the others did not commit a crime to justify the arrest and that they were exercising legitimate political rights.
The arrests will only “increase the political tension among the Saudi people who, like other Arab peoples, aspire to real political reform based on their right to freely express their opinions, hold political gatherings and elect their lawmakers,” the statement said.
The party called on the government to release its founding members.

Jordan
A mob wielding batons waded into an anti-regime protest in Amman on Friday, injuring eight people in the first such violence since protests began in Jordan, witnesses and medics said.
Police blamed the violence on the fact that pro- and anti-government protesters staged rallies near to each other at the same time in the Jordanian capital.
“A quarrel broke out between pro-government rally and another demonstration staged in the same location,” said police spokesman Mohamed Khatib, referring to the youth rally.
Hundreds of youth demonstrators took to the streets after Friday Muslim prayers to demand political reforms, an elected government and an end to corruption. Organisers said 400 people joined the rally but police put the number at 300.
Local journalist Moawafak Mahadine said his arm was broken in the fracas and that his son, Firas, age 30, remained hospitalised with a concussion.

“I was hospitalised and so was my son after thugs beat us with batons,” he told AFP.
Medical officials confirmed admitting and treating the two.
The official news agency Petra said that thousands of government protesters had at the same time staged a rally during which they chanted, “We are ready to die for you Abu Hussein,” in a reference to King Abdallah II.
“There was a row between this rally and a rally calling for reforms, due to their different positions, prompting a police intervention,” said the agency, adding that the incident had ended peacefully.
Youth protesters however told AFP that they were dispersing when government supporters wielding batons launched an assault, injuring eight of them.
Information Minister Taher Adwan said a group of people armed with batons had suddenly assaulted the protesters, taking the security forces by surprise.

“The government condemns this incident. The protest was peaceful and what the assailants did is a violation of citizen liberties,” he said in a statement.
Adwan added that the government would conduct an investigation to discover the identity of the assailants and “re-affirmed its commitment to undertake political reforms, particularly of the laws governing civil liberties.”
The clash marks the first outbreak of political violence in Jordan since the opposition movement began staging regular protests in January.
Issam Khawaja, is secretary general of the leftist opposition party, Hashed, said “hundreds of thugs assaulted demonstrators” and named the eight people wounded.
“We will keep up our action, next Friday will be a day of rage in the whole Kingdom,” he said in a press conference.
On Wednesday, about 30 university students demonstrated in front of the royal palace in Amman, calling for constitutional reforms and limits on the powers of King Abdallah II.
About 1,500 people rallied on the same day in the northern city of Irbid to denounce government “corruption” and demand political reforms, participants said.

Yemen
Anti-regime protesters in the volatile Yemen city of Taez were blasted in a hand grenade attack Friday leaving two dead, while fierce clashes in the southern city of Aden killed four, witnesses said.
Clashes also broke out in the capital Sanaa in which four anti-regime demonstrators were injured, according to witnesses and journalists, who were also beaten.
The grenade attack came as hundreds of protesters took to central Taez after the weekly Muslim prayers to demand President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s ouster, in protests that have been raging in the city for the past week.
A local official told AFP the grenade was lobbed at protesters from a speeding car with government number plates. Two people were in the car “but we will not identify their political affiliation,” he said.
Medics in Aden, meanwhile, said four demonstrators were shot dead as police fired on protests in several areas of the southern port city, which has borne the brunt of the violence that has left 10 people dead since Sunday.

At least 27 were wounded in Friday’s clashes, a medical official in the southern city told AFP.
A witness said that police opened fire at demonstrators who set tyres on fire in a street in Omar al-Mukhtar, killing one of the protesters, Mohammed Munir Khan.
Earlier, three people were shot dead when police fired on protesters in Al-Saada, Khor Maksar and Sheikh Othman districts, as hundreds of people took to the streets around the city to demand Saleh step down.
A local official told AFP that the mayor of Aden, Adnan al-Jafri, handed in his resignation Friday in “protest at the deteriorating security in the city.”
In the capital Sanaa, the scene of a sixth straight day of demonstrations, at least four anti-regime protesters were wounded in an attack by Saleh partisans, witnesses said.

Several journalists were severely beaten by supporters of the ruling General People’s Congress (GPC) who attacked the demonstration using batons and axes, an AFP correspondent reported.
Thousands of demonstrators, mostly students, had gathered following the weekly Muslim prayers in a main street of Sanaa. “People want to overthrow the regime,” they chanted.
Saleh’s supporters numbered in the hundreds, aided by security agents in plainclothes.
Students have tried for the past week to hold a protest march toward the presidential palace but been intercepted each day by stone-throwing regime supporters armed with batons.
The US embassy in Sanaa on Friday condemned “a disturbing rise in the number and violence of attacks against Yemeni citizens gathering peacefully to express their views on the current political situation.

Egypt
Several hundred thousand Egyptians thronged Cairo’s now iconic Tahrir Square on Friday to celebrate the fall of Hosni Mubarak and to pressure their new military rulers for democratic reform.
The state news agency estimated the crowd’s number at two million, but it was impossible to calculate the true size of the festival-like mass of people that spilled out of the plaza and across downtown Cairo.
Even as night fell, sight-seers and families descended on the area and the nearby square of Talaat Harb, swaying to Arabic music, cheering and sending hundreds of hand-launched firework rockets screaming into the air.
Earlier, as the crowd turned the square into a vast open-air mosque and conducted Friday prayers, the demonstration had had a more serious air.
Influential Muslim cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi addressed the multitude, calling on Arab leaders facing protests across the region to listen to their people, to cheers from a crowd with a large contingent of Islamist activists.
“The world has changed, the world has progressed, and the Arab world has changed within,” said Qaradawi, an Egyptian-born cleric based in Qatar.
“Don’t obstruct the people. Don’t try to lead them on with empty talk. Conduct a real dialogue with them.”

Protesters performed their prayers in massed ranks. Tanks surrounded the square, but security was light, with civilian volunteers checking IDs and performing perfunctory pat downs.
Before the crowds swelled for the prayer, a military band in full dress uniform was playing patriotic music to the cheers of the adoring crowd, and soldiers handed out national flags to children.
While the mood was cheerful, the sheer size of the crowd sent a powerful message to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which took power when Mubarak stepped down on Feb 11.
The military has promised to reform the constitution and help stage free elections to ensure the return of civilian rule — but Egyptians are wary.
“The Egyptian people will stay here in Tahrir Square every Friday if the government does not respond to Egypt’s demands,” declared 29-year-old Mohammed Hamdi as night fell on the packed streets.
“Today we’re celebrating,” said 26-year-old Rehan Mahfouz. “If they don’t respond we will gather every Friday.”

A coalition of youth and opposition groups has vowed to keep up the pressure to ensure the rest of its political demands are met, including the “immediate release of all detainees”, it said in statement posted on Facebook.
Hundreds of people went missing during the protests, rights groups say, blaming the army, which they have also accused of torture.
Gamal Eid, a lawyer who heads the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, said: “There are hundreds of detained, but information on their numbers is still not complete ... The army was holding detainees.”
The coalition of activists is also calling for “a speedy replacement of the current caretaker cabinet by a government of technocrats.”
Pro-democracy activists are also seeking a lifting of the decades-old emergency law and support for the pay strikes that have surged around the country.

Tunisia
Tunisia’s cabinet approved Friday an amnesty for political prisoners held under the regime of ousted president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, a government spokesman said.
Taieb Baccouch said the measure would be formalised by a decree “in the next few days”.
A new boat carrying 26 Tunisian migrants has arrived on the Italian island of Lampedusa, an International Organization of Migration spokeswoman said Friday.
“Last night... there was another boat arrival carrying 26 people, all young men. They left from Djerba,” said Jemini Pandya, IOM spokeswoman.
“They said that they had been trying to set off several times but the rough seas had stopped their boats from leaving. Eventually they did leave, and arrived safely although very wet through,” she added.
About more than 5,000 migrants, most of them Tunisians, have arrived on the tiny Italian island in recent days, after the uprising that drove out president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali last month.

Egyptians have also arrived in Italy, following a similar popular revolt that led to the downfall of president Hosni Mubarak.
According to the UN refugees agency, two boats carrying 90 Egyptians arrived on Tuesday in Sicily.
The IOM said that these Egyptians reported leaving Alexandria five days ago.
Pandya noted however that these arrivals did not herald an outflow from Egypt.
“Is this a sign of outflow from Egypt? I would say probably not — this kind of trip would have to be planned many months in advance... it’s too early to talk about any outflows,” she said.