Bahrain cut curfew hours today and urged citizens to return to work after a crackdown on mainly Shia Muslim protesters this week raised tensions in the world's largest oil-producing region.
The call came as a fourth protester died of wounds sustained when troops and police moved on Wednesday to end weeks of unrest that prompted the king to declare martial law and led to troops being sent from Bahrain's Sunni-ruled neighbour, Saudi Arabia.
Bahrain's largest Shia group, Wefaq, said the latest death brought the number of protesters killed since the start of the unrest last month to 11. Four police have also been killed this week, some of them mown down by protesters in cars.
Sunni-ruled Bahrain has since arrested at least nine opposition activists, including two doctors from Manama's largest public hospital, which remains surrounded by troops who check identities and carry out regular searches.
The ferocity of the crackdown, in which troops and police fanned out across Bahrain, imposed a curfew and banned all public gatherings and marches, has stunned Bahrain's Shias and angered the region's non-Arab Shia Muslim power, Iran.
In an effort to bring life gradually back to normal, Bahrain's military rulers cut back a 12 hour curfew that had been imposed on large areas of the capital Manama by four hours.
Bahrain also urged employees working in the public sector and both public and private sector schools and universities to return to work after days of closures and shortened hours.
Some of the larger malls began to reopen today, after days of closures and there were fewer checkpoints in the streets, though helicopters still buzz over Shia areas.
Yesterday, diggers tore down the statue at the centre of Pearl roundabout, the focal point of weeks of protests, in what the foreign minister said was an effort to erase "bad memories".
Reuters