Bahrain reports injuries from Iranian drone fire despite US-Iran ceasefire announcement

MANAMA, April 8 — Iranian attacks on Bahrain injured two people, the Gulf kingdom’s interior ministry said on Wednesday, hours after the United States announced a ceasefire with Iran.

“Two citizens sustained minor injuries and several houses were damaged in the Sitra area as a result of shrapnel falling from the interception of an Iranian drone,” the ministry said in a statement.

Earlier, both Tehran and Washington said they had agreed to a two-week ceasefire barely an hour before President Donald Trump’s deadline to obliterate Iran was set to expire.

On Wednesday morning explosions were heard in Bahrain’s capital Manama, according to an AFP journalist who also saw smoke rising from an area on Sitra island that hosts Bahrain’s principal energy facilities.

In an earlier statement the interior ministry said civil defence crews had succeeded in controlling a fire that broke out in a facility “targeted by the Iranian aggression”, without elaborating on the location of the facility.

Shortly after the ceasefire was announced, Qatar’s defence ministry also announced it was dealing with a missile threat.

Before the truce was publicised, Doha’s interior ministry said falling debris from an earlier intercepted missile salvo had injured four people, including one child.

Gulf countries have faced repeated drone and missile barrages from Iran over recent weeks in response to the US and Israeli strikes that began at the end of February.

Iran targeted fossil fuel infrastructure in the oil-rich Gulf nations while effectively closing the strategic Strait of Hormuz to shipping, through which one-fifth of global oil usually passes. — AFP