Sectarian Clashes Erupted At A School In Bahrain

Sectarian clashes erupted at a school in Bahrain Thursday, fuelling fears a planned march on the royal court Friday could inflame the Gulf island where a majority of citizens is Shia but the ruling family is Sunni.
Bahrain, home to the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet, has been gripped by the worst unrest since the 1990s since protesters took to the streets last month, inspired by uprisings that unseated entrenched rulers in Egypt and Tunisia.
Bahrain’s main opposition group called for the cancellation of a protest march on the royal palace scheduled for Friday, saying it was to avoid an escalation of sectarian tension in the kingdom.
Opposition leaders said the plan to march on the palace in a mainly Sunni area of the capital Manama risked provoking clashes between the Shiite majority and the Sunni minority. “He said this is something (that) will increase the sectarian issues here in Bahrain, and we are against this,” Ali al-Aswad, one of 18 now-resigned Islamic National Accord Association (INAA) MPs, said on Thursday.
“The seven political societies, they are against this march,” said the MP, who resigned along with the other members of the bloc to protest the killing of demonstrators by security forces.
Calls for the march on the palace have been circulating among protesters but the specific group that originated the plan is not clear.
Witnesses said fighting broke out at a school in the town of Sar, an area where both Shias and Sunni live, when some Shia pupils launched anti-government protests Thursday.
They said parents from naturalized families Sunnis mainly from Syria and Pakistan who hold Bahraini passports came to the school. Shia parents later arrived and clashes erupted.
Shias say they are excluded from jobs in the security forces and view Bahrain’s practice of settling Sunni foreigners serving in police as an attempt by its Sunni rulers to change the sectarian balance, an accusation the government denies.