Bahrain crackdown enrages Shiites across region

Shiite anger rose sharply around the Mideast on Friday as large crowds in Iran and Iraq cursed Bahrain's Sunni monarchy and its Saudi backers over a violent crackdown on protesters demanding more rights.

Thousands of Bahrainis gathered for the funeral of Ahmed Farhan, a 29-year-old demonstrator slain Tuesday in the town of Sitra hours after the king declared martial law in response to a month of escalating protests. Shiites account for 70 percent of the tiny island's half-million people but they are widely excluded from high-level posts and positions in the police and military.

At least three protesters and two policemen have been killed and hundreds of demonstrators wounded since the king's declaration, according to opposition groups and officials, driving the overall toll to at least 12. Sitra, the hub of Bahrain's oil industry, has been the site of the worst confrontations, said Ibrahim Youssef, a doctor at the main hospital in the town southwest of the capital, Manama.

A second funeral took place in the village of Karranah, a village west of the capital.

Amateur video footage of security forces shooting and beating protesters has spread across the internet and fueled fury in predominantly Shiite Iraq and in Iran, where a senior cleric on Friday urged Bahraini protesters to keep going until victory or death.

"Brothers and sisters" in Bahrain should "resist against the enemy until you die or win," Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati told worshippers at Friday prayers at Tehran University, a nationally televised forum seen as expressing the views of Iran's ruling Shiite clergy.

Worshippers chanted angry slogans against Saudi Arabia's royal family, which has sent troops to back Bahrain's king.

"There is no God but Allah, Al Saud is God's enemy," some chanted in Arabic. One Persian banner read, "Death to Al Saud."

Across Iraq, thousands rallied in mostly Shiite cities in the country's largest demonstrations since a wave of dissent spread across the Middle East in the wake of Tunisia's overthrow of its autocratic president.

Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani - Iraqi-based Shiism's highest ranking cleric in the Mideast - suspended teachings at religious schools across Iraq on Friday in a show of solidarity with the protesters.

A representative of al-Sistani warned during his Friday sermon in the holy city of Karbala that the brutal images of what is happening in Bahrain will inflame passions and lead to sectarian problems in the region.

"I am ready to sacrifice by my soul, blood and money to support and help our brothers in Bahrain," said one protester in Baghdad, Younis al-Moussawi.

Bahrain's rulers invited armies from other Sunni-ruled Gulf countries this week to help root out dissent as the month of protests spiraled into widespread calls for an end to the Sunni monarchy. In declaring emergency rule, the king gave the military wide powers to battle the uprising.

There are no apparent links between Iran and Bahrain's Shiite opposition but the U.S. and Sunni leaders in the Persian Gulf leaders have expressed concern that Iran could use the unrest in Bahrain to expand its influence in the region. Iran has recalled its ambassador from Bahrain to protest the crackdown.

The United States bases its Navy's 5th Fleet in Bahrain partly to counter Iran's military reach around the region.