MANAMA, June 19: Police in Bahrain beat and arrested demonstrators protesting for jobs in the capital Manama on Sunday, rights activists and witnesses said, but the Interior Ministry claimed police had been attacked first.

“A group of about 50 unemployed and other sympathisers were demonstrating peacefully near the royal court when police harshly attacked them, beat them and arrested more than 30 of them,” human rights activist Nabeel Rajab told Reuters.

Among those beaten and arrested was Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, head of the banned Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, Rajab said.

Other witnesses said police hit demonstrators with batons.

But an Interior Ministry official told the state-owned Bahrain news agency that some demonstrators “assaulted and injured some policemen ... who were forced to disperse them”.

He said police had asked the demonstrators to leave the area close to the royal court — off limits for such gatherings.

Most had been released after a brief detention, the official added, although some refused to leave the lock-up and demanded an investigation into the police’s behaviour.

Bahrain is the least wealthy of the oil-producing Arab states and has a history of political tension. The government says unemployment in the Persian Gulf’s banking hub is about 15 per cent but economists put it at 20 per cent.—Reuters