MANAMA, Feb 15: Bahrain's police fired tear gas at an opposition rally on Friday marking the second anniversary of uprising against the kingdom's rulers, witnesses said, a day after two people died when protests turned violent.

Police also used sound bombs to disperse thousands of opposition supporters who staged a mid-afternoon demonstration on the Boudaya highway that links a string of Shia-populated villages with the capital Manama, witnesses said.

Waving national flags, protesters chanted “Down with the dictatorship!” as they were led by Sheikh Ali Salman of Al-Wefaq, who heads the main opposition group.

“The government will not permit the use of violence to pressure negotiators,” Justice Minister Sheikh Khaled al-Khalifa, who is also coordinator of the national dialogue, said on Friday.

“Whoever claims to be serious and real should not incite violence.”

Clashes raged sporadically in other outlying villages through the night and into the early hours of Friday, during which a policeman was killed by a petrol bomb, the interior ministry said.

“Police officer Mohamed Atef, hit by an incendiary device which seriously injured him, died soon after he was admitted to hospital,” public security chief Major-General Tariq al-Hassan said in an interior ministry statement.

Protesters hurled petrol bombs, iron bars and stones at police in Al-Sahla where the incident occurred, Hassan said.

The opposition identified the teenager slain on Thursday as Hussein al-Jaziri, saying he was killed in the village of Daih near Manama.

Jaziri was “wounded by a shotgun that regime forces fired... He was severely wounded in his stomach and died at the hospital,” said Al-Wefaq.

The official BNA news agency said two police officers were being questioned over the killing which the opposition called “cold-blooded.”

“The people are steadfast in getting their legitimate rights... for a democratic transition,” said a statement by the opposition, which demands a full constitutional monarchy, an elected government and an end to discrimination.

Several groups including Al-Wefaq had called for strikes and nationwide protests on Thursday and Friday to mark the Arab Spring-inspired uprising that was crushed about a month after it began by security forces including troops from neighbouring Saudi Arabia.

The latest unrest comes amid a fresh round of a national dialogue between opposition groups and the government.—AFP