Nightly News   |  February 18, 2011

Bahrain protest ends in bloodshed

An apparently peaceful protest ended in panic Friday as a sustained burst of gunfire rattled across the capital. NBC’s John Ray reports.

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This content comes from Closed Captioning that was broadcast along with this program.

>>> now as promised, to the middle east . the chain of nations where uprisings are under way both large and small, meaning mubarak of egypt might have been the first of several big leaders to be shown the door by the people. the latest nation in play is bahrain, where authorities are now cracking down hard to crush the uprising. our reporters were there for it. when security forces today unleashed live fire on hundreds of unarmed young people who had been at the funerals of protesters who were killed in an earlier crackdown by police and were then marching to the capital's main square . we have two reports tonight, beginning with nbc's john ray who witnessed the crackdown.

>> reporter: this was the moment bahrain's ruler sent the army against their own people. what had been an apparently peaceful protest ended in panic. [ horns honking ]

>> reporter: sustained bursts of gunfire rattled across the capital, and not all were fired in warning. ambulances raced to help those who had been hit. for some, it was already too late.

>> my friend, people kill him. one bullet. i see his head bleeding. it was bleeding.

>> reporter: witnesses told us some of the shots seemed to come from snipers in a tower block overlooking the street.

>> the shooting began when protesters tried to reach the round-about. we heard volley after volley of shots. at first we thought the army was firing over the protesters' heads but it is now clear they were shooting into people. there were at least five injured here, an unknown number of