Omani troops fired into the air near a northern port today to clear a fourth day of protests by Omanis demanding jobs and political reforms, wounding one person in the town of Sohar, witnesses said.
"We were about 200 to 300 people on the road. The army started shooting in the air," one protester in Sohar said, declining to be named. "Many people ran. The man who was shot came to calm the army down."
The crowd dispersed before regrouping again near the port, the witnesses said, and the troops pulled back.
The unrest in Sohar, Oman's main industrial centre, was a rare outbreak of discontent in the normally calm Gulf state ruled by Sultan Qaboos bin Said for four decades, and follows a wave of pro-democracy protests across the Arab world.
The sultan, trying to calm tensions, on Sunday promised 50,000 jobs, unemployment benefits of $390 a month and to study widening the power of a quasi-parliamentary advisory council.
In Sohar after the confrontation, traffic flowed freely into the port, which exports 160,000 barrels per day of refined oil products, despite the presence of around 150 protesters. Protesters had blocked the entrance to the port on Monday.
Omani troops had been deployed in the city beforehand but until yesterday had refrained from intervening to stop protests.
At the nearby Globe Roundabout, centre of the Sohar protests that have drawn up to 2,000 people, five armoured vehicles watched the square but no protesters could be seen.
As many as six people were killed in Sohar on Sunday when police opened fire on stone-throwing demonstrators after failing to disperse them with batons and tear gas. A doctor and nurses at a state hospital said six people died but the health minister put the toll at one.
Sultan Qaboos, who exercises absolute power in a country where political parties are banned, gave more independence to the public prosecutor yesterday and ordered the creation of an independent consumer protection watchdog to monitor prices.
Reuters