MANAMA, Bahrain — Bahrain authorities announced Wednesday a curfew from 4:00pm to 4:00am local time in Manama’s Pearl Square and its financial district, as security forces continued to crack down on pro-democracy protests.
Three protesters and two police officers were killed in clashes between demonstrators and the security forces in Bahrain on Wednesday, opposition and official sources said.
“We now have three martyrs,” Khalil Marzouk, deputy head of the al Wefaq movement and a member of parliament, told AFP.
The interior ministry said the two police officers were killed during the assault after being hit by cars driven by protesters.
Security forces backed by tanks and helicopters assaulted the pro-democracy tent city after dawn, a day after King Hamad bin Issa al Khalifa declared a state of emergency giving the military broad power to put down unrest in the Gulf kingdom.
Reuters reported that tanks and armored personnel carriers moved towards Budaya Street in the capital Wednesday afternoon, just moments before a protest rally was due to begin.
There were fears of further casualties, with Sky News sources in Bahrain saying that the number of dead was unclear because the army was not allowing any reporters access to Pearl Square.
Marzouk said the police were barring access to hospitals in the capital.
“Access to many hospitals, public and private, is blocked. The authorities are surrounding the hospitals,” he said.
The country’s ruling Sunni minority had also surrounded and cut off access to Shiite villages surrounding the city, where many of the protesters had come from to press their demands for democratic reform.
“Most of the villages around Manama are surrounded,” he said.
Another opposition lawmaker, Ali al Aswad, said there was fighting in some of the surrounding villages but it was unclear if anyone had been killed or injured. Phone lines to the villages appeared to have been cut.
Clutches of demonstrators in Pearl Square could be heard chanting “God is great” Wednesday and some set fire to rubbish bins on the streets, but the area was largely deserted.
The protesters are demanding democratic reform from the Sunni dynasty that has ruled the strategic archipelago for more than 200 years.
Sheikh Ali Salman, head of the main Shiite opposition group backing the protesters, said the Sunni-led regime was acting like Libyan strongman Moamar Ghadafi and using “extreme brutality” against ordinary people.
“We reiterate the peaceful character of the uprising despite the thugs that have been deployed by the regime,” he said in an interview with Al Jazeera television.