Zionist Puppet Saudi Regime Police Fire On Revolutionaries

Saudi security forces opened fire on Saudi People in the tense Qatif district of the Eastern Province on Friday, wounding several as hundreds marched to demand the release of detainees, witnesses said.
Live rounds fired by anti-riot police wounded a number of protesters who took to the streets in the early hours, the witnesses said, without specifying a figure, AFP reported.
The interior ministry said security forces dealt with “rioters who burned tires” in parts of Qatif, arresting several people, including Mohammed Al-Shakhuri, whose name figures on a list of 23 wanted people.
“There were no casualties,” the ministry said in a statement carried by the official SPA news agency.
Witnesses said that Shakhuri had been taken to the military hospital in nearby Dhahran with bullet wounds to his back and neck.
The demonstrators carried posters of detainees, including prominent cleric Nimr Al-Nimr, who was arrested earlier this month, witnesses said.
In recent days, confrontations have intensified between police and protesters from the kingdom’s marginalized Shiite minority–estimated at around two million and mostly concentrated in the oil-rich Eastern Province.
Two protesters were killed earlier this month, triggering attacks on government buildings in Qatif.
The district witnessed a spate of protests after an outbreak of violence between pilgrims and religious police in the Muslim holy city of Medina in February last year.
The protests escalated when the kingdom led a force of Persian Gulf troops into neighboring Bahrain the following month to help crush a people uprising against the Zionist Puppet monarchy.
Demonstrators demanded that the Al Saud regime set free prominent Sheikh Nemr Al-Nemr.
Sheikh Nemr was attacked, injured and arrested by Saudi security forces while driving from a farm to his house in Qatif on July 8.
Chanting slogans in support of social justice in the oil-rich Eastern Province, protestors asked the regime to stop killing civilians by the Saudi-backed forces in neighboring Bahrain.
Earlier in the week, similar demonstrations were held against the regime in the town of Awamiyah and the city of Buraydah.
Since February 2011, protesters have held demonstrations on an almost regular basis in Saudi Arabia, mainly in the Qatif region and Awamiyah in Eastern Province, calling for the release of all political prisoners, freedom of expression and assembly, and an end to widespread discrimination.
However, the demonstrations have turned into protests against the Al Saud regime, especially since November 2011, when Saudi security forces killed five protesters and injured many others in Eastern Province.
The Saudi Interior Ministry issued a statement on March 5, 2011, prohibiting “all forms of demonstrations, marches or protests, and calls for them.”
According to Human Rights Watch, the Saudi regime “routinely represses expression critical of the government.”