Dubai: Bahrain's leading Shi'ite opposition party Wefaq said Monday 250 people have been detained and 44 others have gone missing since a security crackdown crushed weeks of protests - more than double last week's figures.
Earlier this month, Bahrain's government imposed martial law and called in troops from fellow Gulf neighbours, including Saudi Arabia, to quell weeks of unrest during pro-democracy protests.
Separately, military prosecutors banned media from reporting about suspects and cases linked to the martial law, state news agency BNA reported on Monday.
The severity of the crackdown, which banned all public gatherings and spread masked security forces across the city to man checkpoints, stunned Bahrain's majority Shi'ites and angered the region's non-Arab Shi'ite power Iran.
Wefaq said many were being arrested at checkpoints or in house raids. In other cases, family members report that relatives simply do not return home, Wefaq member Mattar Ebrahim Mattar told Reuters by telephone.
"We have around 250 confirmed arrested and 44 who are missing, though that number fluctuates when people reappear after hiding from police," said Mattar, a parliamentarian before Wefaq resigned over the use of force against protesters.
"Just today and yesterday, we got calls from 35 families saying they lost contact with their relatives when they passed through a checkpoint," Mattar said.
"We don't know what's happened to them, authorities won't say. In these conditions, we actually have to hope they were arrested."
Bahraini officials were not immediately available to comment on Wefaq's estimated number of those missing or arrested.
