Soldiers open fire on protesters in Bahrain

Bahraini security forces fired on protesters near Pearl Square last night and a senior medical official said more than 60 people were treated in hospital, a day after police forcibly cleared a protest camp in the capital, Manama.

Ali Ibrahim, deputy chief of medical staff at Salmaniya hospital, said 66 wounded had been admitted from the clash at Pearl Square. Four were in a critical condition.

The injuries were worse than those seen on Thursday, he said.

Yesterday's shooting occurred on a day of mourning when Shiites buried four people killed a day earlier in the police raid on the Pearl Square traffic circle.

"We think it was the army," former MP Sayed Hadi said. He is from Wefaq, the main Shiite bloc, which resigned from parliament on Thursday.

The latest violence coincided with an appeal for calm and dialogue from the crown prince, Sheikh Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa. speaking on behalf of King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa.

"I respect Wefaq, as I respect others. Today is the time to sit down and hold a dialogue, not to fight," he said on Bahrain TV.

About 1,000 emotional people gathered outside one hospital, some spilling into the corridors as casualties were brought in, including one with a bloody sheet over his head. Some men wept.

Fakhri Abdullah Rashed said he had seen soldiers shooting at protesters in Pearl Square. "I saw people shot in several parts of their body. It was live bullets," the protester added.

Another Wefaq MP, Jalal Firooz, said demonstrators had been holding a memorial for a protester killed earlier this week when riot police fired tear gas at them. Police had no comment.

The crowd then made for Pearl Square, where army troops who took it over after the police raid opened fire, Mr Firooz said.

Four people were killed and 231 injured when riot police raided the camp on Thursday.

Soldiers in tanks and armoured vehicles later took control of the square, which the mainly Shia protesters had hoped to use as a base like Cairo's Tahrir Square, the heart of protests that toppled Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak.

Several thousand mourners turned out yesterday to bury those killed in what Bahrain's top Shia cleric called a "massacre" ordered by the island's Sunni ruling family to crush protests.

Roughly 70 per cent of the country's 600,000 native population are Shia Muslims.

Revered cleric Sheikh Issa Qassem denounced the police attack on the square and said the authorities had shut the door to dialogue. "The massacre was on purpose to kill and to hurt, and not to clear any demonstration," he said.

The Gulf Arab state is a close ally of the United States and Saudi Arabia, which see it as a bulwark against Shia Iran.