Thousands of anti-government demonstrators blocked access to the financial district in Manama, the capital, on Sunday, preventing many workers from getting to their offices and pushing back police officers who tried to disperse them.
It was the most serious challenge to the royal family that rules Bahrain since protests began last month.
Witnesses said the police used tear gas and fired on the protesters with rubber bullets.
TUNISIA: Curfew ordered in town after clashes leave two dead.
Authorities have ordered a curfew in a central mining town amid simmering unrest following deadly clashes between police and protesters, the state news agency reported Sunday.
The 7 p.m.-to-5 a.m. curfew, initiated Saturday, was imposed on Metlaoui, where clashes two days earlier left two people dead and 20 injured, the TAP agency said. Troops dispersed protesters in lingering unrest Saturday.
YEMEN: 100 hurt as cops fire bullets, tear gas at protests.
Police on rooftops fired live bullets and tear gas at protesters Sunday, wounding at least 100 people camping out near Sana University. The day’s violence, which left two dead in a southern province, was evidence that month-long protests demanding the resignation of Yemen’s longtime leader may be spiraling out of control. Embattled President Ali Abdullah Saleh has resorted to increasingly violent tactics to stem the uprising against his 32-year rule.
OMAN: Sultan to hand over powers to councils.
Oman’s ruler, Sultan Qaboos bin Said, issued a decree Sunday saying he would hand legislative and regulatory powers within 30 days to two current advisory councils, one elected and another appointed by the sultan. The move reflects the scramble to head off possible wider unrest in the strategically important nation. Oman and Iran share control of the Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, which carries 40 percent of the world’s oil-tanker traffic.
LEBANON: Pro-West crowd demands Hezbollah give up weapons.
Tens of thousands of supporters of Lebanon’s pro-Western opposition thronged downtown Beirut on Sunday, demanding that the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah give up its weapons.
The rally was a potent show of support for Lebanon’s toppled Prime Minister Saad Hariri, who moved into the opposition after Hezbollah and its allies forced his government to collapse in January.
“We want to place the weapons at the disposal of the state because it is the state that unites us all and it is the army that protects us all,” Hariri said, shouting over the crowd as they cheered and waved the national flag.
Ghaleb Abu Zeinab of Hezbollah’s political bureau said the group will not respond to Sunday’s gathering.
SAUDI ARABIA: Hundreds urge release of detainees held for years without trial.
More than 200 Saudis gathered outside the Interior Ministry in the capital to demand the release of detainees who they say have been imprisoned for years without trial.
Saudi authorities ban demonstrations and are increasingly determined to prevent the unrest in the rest of the Middle East from spreading to the oil-rich kingdom. However, police allowed the rare sit-in outside the ministry Sunday without intervening.
