Manama: A Bahraini rights activist says a
woman has died during clashes between riot police and
anti-government protesters in the Gulf kingdom.
Nabeel Rajab, the president of the Bahrain Centre for
Human Rights, said today that 47-year-old Zainab Hasan Ahmed
al-Jumaa suffocated after inhaling tear gas fired by riot
police during a demonstration yesterday near her home in
Sitra, the hub of Bahrain's oil industry.
Her death brings the number of those who have died
since February to 33, when Bahrain's Shiite majority started
protests for greater freedoms in the Sunni-ruled kingdom.
Bahrain's Interior Ministry denied al-Jumaa's death
was linked to a police operation and said in a statement
posted on the ministry's website late yesterday that the woman
died of natural causes.
PTI
First Published: Saturday, July 16, 2011, 18:18