#pearl square

[sjamesp-blog]

Pearl Monument (Bahrain) demolished by government forces. Footage starts about 14 seconds in to the video. Apparently they plan to replace it with a traffic light intersection.

[johrune-blog]

Police cracked down on Bahraini protesters in Pearl Square this morning. Hundreds were injured and a few police and protesters were killed. The crackdown was described as violent and the hospitals are flooded. Protesters are vowing to continue protesting.

[garik]

Feb. 22, 2011 Shiite Bahrainis march toward Pearl Square in Manama during an anti-government demonstration.

Hamad I Mohammed

[shortformblog]

A tale of two conflicts: Bahrain, Libya seem headed in different ways

Bahrain In a major symbolic victory for protesters, the military has pulled out of Pearl Square in Manama, allowing the protesters to re-enter amidst much international anger over the violence against the peaceful protests.

Libya As fresh violence continues to break, at least 84 have died at the hands of the Libyan military, according to Human Rights Watch. "We've never heard of anything like this before. It's horrible," one eyewitness said to Al Jazeera. source

[inothernews]

From the New York Times:

Protesters in Bahrain fought past riot policemen who sprayed them with tear gas and shot at them with rubber bullets Saturday, retaking a central square and leading the country’s crown prince to say he had ordered the army out of the area. The announcement set off a wave of jubilation among the thousands of protesters in Pearl Square, the heart of the country’s uprising, and added new pressures for shaken governments in Libya, Algeria and Yemen as they made new moves to stifle protests.

The withdrawal of security forces in Bahrain was a victory for the country’s main Shiite opposition bloc, which had rejected a call to negotiate from Bahrain’s Sunni monarch until the authorities pulled the military off the streets.

Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, who is also deputy commander of the military, announced in a statement that he had ordered the withdrawal of all military from the streets of Bahrain “with immediate effect,” adding that the Bahrain police force would continue to oversee law and order.

Inspiring, and God willing no more bloodshed.

(Photo by Andrea Bruce for the New York Times)

[truth-has-a-liberal-bias]

Bahraini soldiers fired automatic weapons and lobbed tear gas at mourners in a funeral procession Friday who defied a ban on gatherings and marched toward a central square in the capital that was the scene of a bloody crackdown the day before.

NPR's Peter Kenyon, who accompanied the procession in Manama, said the crowd from the funeral seemed to be making its way to Salmaniya Medical Complex, the main hospital, when they took a left turn into Pearl Square.

"As they got close, as the front edge of this very long line of marchers got close, the sound of shots erupted — scattering everybody," Kenyon said. "I think I saw one person with a gunshot wound. I can't confirm that yet; they were carrying him off in a pickup truck. It looked like blood on the leg."

He added: "I talked to one paramedic who said he carried a dead young boy who'd been shot in the forehead back to the hospital. A second one said he had carried someone who had also been shot in a critical area and was not expected to survive.

"There have been, I'm sure, at least a dozen casualties and maybe many more," Kenyon said. [...]

[inothernews]