Two dead as Bahrain police break up protest camp

Bahraini police broke up a protest camp in a central Manama square early on Thursday, killing at least two people, as they tried to end three days of demonstrations inspired by uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, witnesses and the opposition said.

"Police are coming, they are shooting teargas at us," one demonstrator said by telephone. Another said: "I am wounded, I am bleeding. They are killing us."

One protester said he had driven away two people who had been wounded by rubber bullets.

Thousands of overwhelmingly Shi'ite protesters took to the streets this week demanding more say in the Gulf Arab island kingdom where a family of Sunni Muslims rules over a population that mostly belongs to the Shi'ite sect.

Hundreds had camped out at Pearl Square, a road junction in the capital that they sought to turn into the base of a long-running protest like that at Cairo's Tahrir Square which led to the downfall of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

But the square appeared nearly empty of protesters early on Thursday after police moved in and was littered with abandoned tents, blankets and rubbish. The smell of teargas wafted through the air and two ambulances were seen rushing from the scene.

A teenager shepherded a sobbing woman into a car, saying she had been separated from her 2-year-old daughter in the chaos. At a main hospital, about 200 people gathered to mourn and protest.

"I was there... The men were running away, but the women and kids could not run as easily, some are still inside (the square)," said Ibrahim Mattar, a parliamentarian from the main Shi'ite opposition Wefaq party, which has walked out of Parliament.

"It is confirmed two have died," he said. "More are in critical condition."

Bahrain's interior ministry said on Twitter that security forces had "cleared Pearl roundabout" of demonstrators, and that a section of a main road was temporarily blocked.

On Wednesday the party demanded a new constitution that would move the country toward democracy.

"We're not looking for a religious state. We're looking for a civilian democracy ... in which people are the source of power, and to do that we need a new constitution," the group's general secretary Sheikh Ali Salman told a news conference.

The religious divide that separates Bahrain's ruling family from most of its subjects has led to sporadic unrest since the 1990s, and Bahrain's stability is being closely watched as protest movements blow through North Africa and West Asia.

It is considered the state most vulnerable to popular unrest in a Gulf Arab region where, in an unwritten pact, rulers have traded a share of their oil wealth for political submission.

Regional power Saudi Arabia, and the United States -- which bases its Fifth Fleet in Bahrain -- both view the ruling Khalifa family as a bulwark against Shi'ite Iran.

King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa introduced a new constitution giving Bahrainis more political rights a decade ago, but the opposition says he has not gone far enough to introduce democracy. Most of the cabinet are still members of his family.