Bahraini security forces fired on protesters near Pearl Square on Friday and a senior medical official said more than 60 people were treated in hospital, a day after police forcibly cleared a protest camp in the capital.



Ali Ibrahim, deputy chief of medical staff at Salmaniya hospital, said 66 wounded had been admitted from the clash at Pearl Square in the capital. Four were in a critical condition.



The injuries were worse than those seen on Thursday, he said.



Friday's shooting occurred on a day of mourning when Shi'ites buried four people killed a day earlier in the police raid on the Pearl Square traffic circle.



It also coincided with an appeal for calm and dialogue from the crown prince, Sheikh Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa. "I respect Wefaq, as I respect others. Today is the time to sit down and hold a dialogue, not to fight," he said on Bahrain TV.



Another Wefaq MP, Jalal Firooz, said demonstrators had been elsewhere, marking the death of a protester killed earlier this week when riot police fired tear gas at protesters.



The crowd then made for Pearl Square, where army troops who took it over after the police raid opened fire, Firooz said.



Police had no immediate comment. Witnesses said about 20 police cars had driven to the square after the initial shooting.



"This is a peaceful protest," the doctor, Mahmoud Abbas, told al-Manar. "How can it be confronted with bullets? There is a humanitarian disaster. We cannot handle this."



Four people were killed and 231 wounded when riot police raided the protest camp early on Thursday, when most of the demonstrators were sleeping.



Soldiers in tanks and armored vehicles later took control of the square, which the mainly Shi'ite protesters had hoped to use as a base like Cairo's Tahrir Square, the heart of protests that toppled Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Feb. 11.



Several thousand mourners turned out on Friday to bury those killed in what Bahrain's top Shi'ite cleric called a "massacre" ordered by the island's Sunni ruling family to crush protests.



The unrest has presented the United States with a now familiar dilemma, torn between its desire for stability in a longstanding Arab ally and a need to uphold its own principles about the right of people to demonstrate for democratic change.



Revered cleric Sheikh Issa Qassem denounced the police attack on the square and said the authorities had shut the door to dialogue, but stopped short of calling for street protests.



"The massacre was on purpose to kill and to hurt and not to clear any demonstration," he said.



People interrupted his Friday prayer sermon in the village of Diraz, shouting "The people want the fall of the regime."



Qassem, an influential but cautious figure who normally shuns politics, disappointed some in the audience of thousands who had hoped he would appeal for protests to be stepped up.



Shi'ites form 70 percent of Bahraini nationals ruled by the Sunni al-Khalifa dynasty, the U.S. State Department estimates.



Several thousand Shi'ites joined funeral processions in the island village of Sitra, south of Manama, for three of the dead.



Police stayed away, but a helicopter circled overhead. On Tuesday, one protester was killed at the funeral of another.



Inside the Sitra mosque, men washed the body of 22-year-old student Mahmoud Abu Taki, who was peppered with buckshot.



"He told me before he went there, 'don't worry, father, I want freedom'," said his father, Mekki Abu Taki, 53.



The flag-draped coffins of his son and Ali Mansour Khudeir, 58, were driven to the cemetery atop vehicles. Three protesters were buried there and the fourth in Karzakan village.



"Trial, trial for the criminal gang," the crowd shouted. "Justice, freedom and constitutional monarchy."



The Gulf Arab state is a close ally of the United States and Saudi Arabia, which see it as a bulwark against Shi'ite Iran.



The U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet, which projects U.S. power across the Middle East and Central Asia, is based near Manama.



The unrest in Bahrain, a regional banking hub and a minor oil producer, has shaken foreign confidence in the economy.



Saudi Arabia fears unrest spreading to its own Shi'ite community, a minority there but concentrated in the eastern oil-producing area of the world's biggest crude exporter.

Open gallery view Friends and relatives chant anti-government slogans during the funeral of Mahmoud Maki Abu Taki, 22, who died during clashes between Bahraini anti- government protesters and riot police. Credit: AP