Foreign Office condemns blast in Bahrain

Published March 5, 2014
The body of a riot police officer lies on the road as other officers tend to him after a bomb exploded during clashes after a revisit to the grave of detainee Jaffar Mohammed Jaffar, in the village of Daih west of Manama, March 3, 2014. — Photo by Reuters
The body of a riot police officer lies on the road as other officers tend to him after a bomb exploded during clashes after a revisit to the grave of detainee Jaffar Mohammed Jaffar, in the village of Daih west of Manama, March 3, 2014. — Photo by Reuters

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan strongly condemned the terrorist incident in Bahrain in which three police personnel and several people including one Pakistani, lost their lives, whereas many others were seriously injured.

Terrorism in all in its forms and manifestations constitutes one of the most serious threats to international peace and security, a spokesman of the FO said in a statement.

The people of Pakistan, being victims of this menace, sympathise with the people of Bahrain and the families of victims of this terrorist attack, the statement added.

Moreover, Bahrain blacklisted three anti-government groups as terrorist organisations on Tuesday, a day after a bomb killed two local policemen and an officer from the United Arab Emirates, state news agency BNA said.

The attack raised fears of more violence in the Sunni Muslim-ruled kingdom, where opposition groups led by majority Shias have staged protests for the past three years demanding political reform and an end to perceived discrimination.

The cabinet, meeting in emergency session in Manama, put the”so-called February 14 movement, Saraya al-Ashtar (AshtarBrigade) and Saraya al-Muqawama (Resistance Brigade) and any group associated or allied to them on lists of terrorist groups”, BNA said.

The decision effectively outlaws these groups and makes their members subject to imprisonment.

Bahrain listed Lebanon's Shia Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation last year.

BNA said 25 suspects in Monday's bombing in the village of Daih, west of the capital Manama, had been rounded up. It did not says if they were members of any of the blacklisted groups.

Speaking on Bahraini state television, Interior Minister Sheikh Rashed bin Abdullah al-Khalifa condemned the attack and blamed Iran for instability in the island kingdom.

“As we have said before, what happens inside our country has foreign links. We have announced publicly that foreign training sessions were organised and hosted at Iranian Revolutionary Guard camps that operated with official backing,” he said.

Iran denies links to Bahrain's opposition. It does, however,champion their cause.

The three policemen were killed by a remotely detonated bomb during a protest as hundreds of mourners marched in a procession for a 23-year-old Shia who died in custody last week.

The shadowy Saraya al-Ashtar organisation has claimed responsibility for the attack in a message on social media that could not immediately be authenticated.

Saraya al-Muqawama is also little-known, but the February 14 movement has been organising anti-government protests since the security forces crushed the mass demonstrations of February-March 2011 with help from Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

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