Protest follows funeral of Bahraini teenager in Shiite village

A protest broke out in Bahrain Tuesday after thousands of mourners attended the funeral in a Shiite village of a teenager whose family says died of injuries suffered in a police chase, witnesses said.

Demonstrators blocked roads and hurled stones at security forces, who responded with tear gas, they said, without reporting any casualties in the unrest south of Manama.

Ali Abdulghani, 17, who died on Monday, was injured four days earlier as he was being chased by police, his family said in a statement released by Bahrain's main Shiite opposition movement, Al-Wefaq.

Rights groups including the European Centre for Democracy and Human Rights have demanded an impartial investigation into his death, saying the injuries had been inflicted during arrest.

Mourners crowded into the village cemetery carrying posters of the "martyr" Abdulghani, witnesses said.

The unrest came on the eve of the arrival in Bahrain of US Secretary of State John Kerry to take part in a meeting with his Arab counterparts in the Gulf.

Bahrain has been shaken by unrest since it quelled a month-long Shiite-led uprising demanding reforms which erupted on February 14, 2011.

The tiny but strategic Sunni-ruled kingdom lies across the Gulf from Shiite Iran and is home to the US Fifth Fleet.
Source: AFP