Explosive material was packed inside a pressure cooker
ABU DHABI: Bahrain police found a bomb planted on a busy causeway linking the island to Saudi Arabia, and four officers were shot and wounded in a village, officials said in the latest violence to hit the kingdom on the second anniversary of its uprising. The 2 kg bomb, discovered on Thursday near a mosque on the Bahraini end of the route used by thousands of people a day, was safely defused, said the Information Authority in the US-allied state. Late on Friday, four officers were hit by birdshot pellets in the Shia Muslim village of Karzakan, the authority added, quoting the island’s chief of public security Major-General Tariq Hassan Al Hassan.
Sustained violence has cast a shadow over talks launched this week between mostly Shia Muslim opposition groups and the Sunni Muslim-dominated government to try to end a political deadlock in Bahrain, home to the US Fifth Fleet.
Bahrain has seen almost daily demonstrations in the run-up to the anniversary of the pro-democracy revolt, which has put the kingdom on the front line of a region-wide tussle for influence between Iran and Arab states such as Saudi Arabia.
Bahrain accuses Iran of stirring up trouble in the kingdom, which Tehran denies. REUTERS
