Rock-throwing youths attack US Embassy

Young demonstrators pelted the high walls surrounding the US Embassy compound in Manama, Bahrain, with stones today shouting “Death to America and Israel”, before being dispersed by riot police firing tear gas.

More than 200 youths threw stones and broken chunks of cement blocks at the walls.

“America is the root of all the problems, and we want this embassy in Bahrain to be shut down,” said a teenage student from a nearby school.

Bahrain, a tiny Gulf island country, is a close ally of the United States and home base to the US Navy’s 5th Fleet.

It is one of the more westernised countries in the Gulf, though anti-American sentiment has been rising in the wake of the Israeli assassination of the founder of the Hamas militant group, Sheik Ahmed Yassin.