MANAMA/DUBAI: Clashes Friday between Bahraini security forces and protesters left five policemen wounded and dozens of demonstrators suffering from tear-gas inhalation, the authorities and activists said, a day before a key by-election to fill parliamentary seats vacated by opposition leaders in protest at the crushing of popular unrest in March.

“Five policemen were injured in clashes [Friday], with one of them sustaining second degree burns from a homemade incendiary device,” the interior ministry said in a post on social networking website Twitter.
Witnesses said that hundreds of anti-regime protesters marched in small groups from the Shiite village of Sanabis toward Pearl Square, symbol of the protests earlier this year.
“Down Hamad,” they chanted, referring to Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Issa al-Khalifa, whose Sunni dynasty has ruled the Shiite majority kingdom for decades.

Security forces used “shotguns, rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse the crowds,” said Mohammad Mascati, head of the Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights.
“Dozens suffered from breathing difficulties due to tear-gas inhalation and were taken to homes for treatment out of fear from being arrested at hospitals,” he told AFP.

The Interior Ministry said only tear gas was used.
“Security forces have not used shotguns, rubber bullets or birdshot in any clashes today. Only tear gas has been used,” it said.
Security forces had deployed heavily in central Manama and surrounded Pearl Square with barbed wire barricades to prevent the protesters – including some 50 women – from approaching, witnesses said.

Bahrain’s Shiite Muslim majority took to the streets of Manama in February seeking more access to jobs and a greater say in government but a brutal crackdown and martial law ended the protest wave.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates sent in 1,500 troops to help suppress the unrest in Bahrain, a strategically important Gulf island off the coast of the oil-producing Saudi Eastern Province and home to the biggest U.S. military presence in the region, the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet.

More radical elements of the opposition have tried several times to march back into the capital recently, and Friday’s attempt appeared to be the largest yet, witnesses said. Protests have also flared nightly in smaller villages where many Bahraini Shiites live.

Elections for 18 of the 40 seats in parliament will be held Saturday to replace opposition deputies who quit in anger over the crackdown, in which at least 30 people were killed, more than 1,000 arrested and allegations of torture were rife. The opposition is boycotting the vote, saying that the government has not done enough to address their grievances.

Separately, Human Rights Watch said the U.S. should delay a planned arms sale to Bahrain until the Gulf kingdom takes meaningful steps to address human rights violations during and since the crackdown on public dissent.
The planned sale includes armored Humvee vehicles and missiles worth $53 million, HRW said.
“It will be hard for people to take U.S. statements about democracy and human rights in the Middle East seriously when, rather than hold its ally Bahrain to account, it appears to reward repression with new weapons,” Maria McFarland, deputy Washington director at HRW, said in a statement.

Bahrain has sought to defuse international criticism over its handling of the unrest by launching a national dialogue and inviting and funding a high-profile panel of lawyers to investigate claims of rights abuses.
The dialogue was seen by many activists and observers as a charade and the fact-finding mission was undermined by a series of gaffes by its chairman Cherif Bassiouni, who seemed to have pre-judged the inquiry’s outcome, due in late October.

The Bahraini government has acknowledged there were cases of abuse, but says there was never any systematic use of excessive force against demonstrators or detainees.