Bahrain police officer killed in ‘terrorist blast’
Seven others wounded in mainly Shia village, ministry says, in latest attack to target police force in Arab Gulf state.
An explosion in Bahrain has killed one police officer and wounded seven other people, among them a child, according to the country’s interior ministry.
The attack occurred west of the capital, Manama, in a predominantly Shia village called Karanah, the ministry said late on Friday.
The explosion, described by the ministry as a “terrorist blast”, wounded four policemen as well as a married couple and their child.
One of the officers was injured seriously, Isa Abdulrahman al-Hammadi, Bahrain’s information minister, told AFP news agency.
In July, a bombing killed two police officers in Sitra, south of Manama.
Police investigators later said five suspects were arrested for that Sitra attack, with Major-General Tariq al-Hasan, the police chief, saying the men were connected to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as well as the Lebanese Shia Hezbollah group.
Iran links alleged
Also in July, Bahraini authorities declared they had foiled an attempt to smuggle weapons from Iran.
Hammadi, the information minister, said the explosives used in Friday’s attack in Karanah were “very similar” to that seized by authorities last month which “came from Iran”.
![Friday's bomb blast west of Manama is the latest in a long series of attacks targeting security forces in Bahrain [Reuters]](/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/652b537af0fc4d678169c1254509fd7a_18.jpeg)
Bahrain faced unrest during the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings, when a large number of Shias and some Sunnis demanded political and economic reforms in the country.
Since then, there have been recurrent protests among the country’s Shia majority demanding greater political rights from the Sunni-led monarchy.
The unrest has been accompanied by a growing number of bomb attacks.
The Arab Gulf state accuses Iran’s government of encouraging violence against security forces in the country.
Bahrain hosts the US navy’s Fifth Fleet.
