Bahrain blast injures 4 police

Four Bahraini policemen were wounded in a "terrorist" attack in a Shiite village, one of them critically, the kingdom's interior ministry said on Saturday. "Four policemen injured including one critically in a terror blast in Bani Jamra" west of the capital Manama, the ministry said on Twitter, without elaborating. "The explosion was from a home-made bomb," an official at the ministry's press centre told AFP by phone, adding that the device detonated as members of the security forces passed by. They had arrived in Bani Jamra before dawn to disperse dozens of protesters, who were blocking roads in the village, the official said. "An officer, who was seriously wounded in the arm and the abdomen, was hospitalised and has been operated on... and three policemen suffered burns," he said, adding that an inquiry was under way to find those behind the attack. The Bahraini authorities have denounced similar incidents in recent weeks, including on April 10, when seven policemen were wounded by a home-made bomb in Akr, south of Manama. A fortnight later they said four policemen suffered injuries from a "terrorist explosion" in the village of Diraz. Tensions are running high in Bahrain where a month-long Shiite-led uprising was crushed in March 2011. Demonstrations have, however, intensified lately as protesters sporadically clash with the police. The Gulf state's Shiite majority, which claims marginalisation and disenfranchisement by the Sunni regime, wants political and social reforms. Thousands of Bahrainis took to the streets on Friday to protest against constitutional reforms, ratified earlier in the week by King Hamad and aimed at defusing tensions, which the demonstrators said were insufficient. Amnesty International says around 60 people have been killed since the anti-regime protests first erupted in February last year.