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A statement issued by the Ministry of Social Affairs said the Islamic Action Society has been temporarily closed due to "the illegal activities which violate the rules under which the society was established."

A group of unemployed Bahrainis gave up a planned protest yesterday, one day after His Majesty King Hamad Bin Eisa Al Khalifa warned against politicising the unemployment issue.

Bahrain's political groups and newspapers have extended their support to the editor-in-chief of an Arabic daily who says he was threatened by a cleric in connection with a cartoon the newspaper ran last week.

Bahraini Shiite clerics condemned a caricature published in Al Ayyam newspaper which they claim offended Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The Bahrain Cabinet has criticised the local media for ignoring the government's side of the story in the recent row with the Parliament over "missing" state revenues.

Dozens of Bahraini human rights and political activists called on the government to compensate those who were allegedly tortured during the clashes of the mid 1990s and to abolish an amnesty law that grants immunity to former security officials.

Demonstrations organised according to the laws are a constitutional right and a form of freedom of expression, His Majesty King Hamad Bin Eisa Al Khalifa has said.

Bahrain's Ministry of Interior has warned against repeating illegal rallies in off-limits places such as the Royal Court, two days after dozens of unemployed citizens were arrested and later released.

Two Bahraini pilots were killed after their military helicopter crashed into the sea, the Bahrain Defence Force said on Sunday night.

Authorities have arrested, and later released, dozens of Bahrainis who were protesting at the Royal Court yesterday in support of unemployed citizens, officials and rights activists said.

An influential cleric has called on the government to close the Bahrain office of a Washington-based pro-democracy organisation, claiming that it is a tool of American policy and "an enemy" of Islam.

A group of Bahraini MPs has submitted a proposal to amend the constitution in an attempt that is aimed to increase the powers of the elected parliament and encourage opposition parties to take part in next year's elections.