MANAMA, Bahrain - Bahrain on Friday tore down the 300-foot monument at the heart of a square purged of Shiite protesters this week, erasing a symbol of an uprising that's inflaming sectarian tensions across the region.
The monument - six white curved beams topped with a huge concrete pearl - was built in Pearl Square as a tribute to the Sunni-ruled kingdom's history as a pearl-diving center. It became the backdrop to the Shiite majority's uprising after protesters set up a month-long camp at Pearl Square in the capital, Manama.
Security forces overran the camp on Wednesday, setting off clashes that killed at least five people, including two policemen. At least 12 people have been killed in the month-long revolt.
Bahrain's foreign minister, Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa, told reporters in Manama that the army brought down the monument because "it was a bad memory."
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"We are not waging war, we are restoring law and order," Khalid said at a news conference in Manama.
Thousands of Bahrainis gathered for the funeral of Ahmed Farhan, a demonstrator slain Tuesday in the town of Sitra hours after the king declared martial law in response to a month of escalating protests. Sitra, the hub of Bahrain's oil industry, has been the site of the worst confrontations.
A funeral for Abdul-Jaffer Mohammed Abdul-Ali, 40, took place in the village of Karranah, west of the capital. His brother, Abdul-Ali Mohammed, told The Associated Press that Abdul-Jaffer was killed Wednesday morning on his way to Pearl Square to reinforce the protesters' lines during the military assault on the encampment.
"My brother was not a political man, but he participated in the protest every day to have a better future for his four children," Abdul-Ali said.
"When he heard the Pearl Square was under attack, he went there," he added. "Our country is under siege and he wanted to help liberate it."
Shiites account for 70 percent of the tiny island's half-million people, but they are widely excluded from high-level posts and positions in the police and military of the country, which is home to the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet.
"Brothers and sisters" in Bahrain should "resist against the enemy until you die or win," Iranian Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati told worshippers at Friday prayers at Tehran University, a nationally televised forum seen as expressing the views of Iran's ruling Shiite clergy.
