Bahrain police use teargas to break up demonstration

>MANAMA (Reuters) - Bahraini police fired teargas to disperse a crowd of people camped out in a central Manama square on Thursday, witnesses said, as they tried to end three days of protests inspired by uprising in Egypt and Tunisia. "Police are coming, they are shooting teargas at us," one demonstrator told Reuters by telephone.Another said:"I am wounded, I am bleeding."Thousands of mainly Shi'ite protesters took to the streets this week demanding more say in a country where a family of Sunni Muslims rules over a population that mostly belongs to the Shi'ite sect.Hundreds were camped out at Pearl Square, a road junction in the capital, which they sought to turn into the base of a long-running protest like that at Cairo's Tahrir Square that led to the downfall of President Hosni Mubarak.The square appeared nearly empty of protesters early on Thursday and was littered with abandoned tents, blankets and rubbish.The smell of teargas wafted through the air and two ambulances were seen rushing from the scene. There was no immediate word on casualities."I was there...the men were running away, but the women and kids could not run as easily, some are still inside (the square)," said Ibrahim Mattar, a parliamentarian from the main Shi'ite opposition Wefaq party, which has walked out of parliament.On Wednesday the party demanded a new constitution that would move the country toward democracy."We're not looking for a religious state. We're looking for a civilian democracy ... in which people are the source of power, and to do that we need a new constitution," the group's general secretary Sheikh Ali Salman told a news conference.The religious divide that separates the ruling family from most of its subjects has led to sporadic unrest since the 1990s, and Bahrain's stability is being closely watched as protest movements blow through North Africa and the Middle East.It is considered the state most vulnerable to popular unrest in a Gulf Arab region where, in an unwritten pact, rulers have traded a share of their oil wealth for political submission.BULWARKRegional power Saudi Arabia, and the United States -- which bases its navy's Mid-East fleet in Bahrain -- both view the ruling Khalifa family as a bulwark against Shi'ite Iran.

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