Jordan

Jordanian protesters line up after pro-government supporters pelted them with stones, injuring six people during a protest at the camp in central Amman, March, 25, 2011

Elsewhere in the Middle East, anti-government protests continued in Yemen, Syria and Jordan. Security forces intervened to disperse protesters in the Jordanian capital Amman Friday, causing a number of casualties. Jordanian Prime Minister Samir Bakhit accused Islamists in Syria and Egypt of provoking the violence. He argued that security forces had no choice but to intervene.

He says that rival protesters exchanged insults and threw rocks at each other forcing the government to deploy security forces to prevent the situation from getting out of control.

Syria

In nearby Syria, hundreds of protesters turned out in the town of Sanamein, near the southern city of Diraa, Saturday to bury six people killed in violence a day earlier. Syria’s highest Muslim religious leader, Mufti Ahmed Badr el Din Hassoun complained that Islamic preachers in the region were working to create sectarian strife in Syria.

He says that [violence] in Diraa, Sanamein and Latakia Friday were provoked by outside forces as reports will soon show. The Syrian people, he insists, are smarter than these preachers of strife who are calling on them to kill each other along sectarian lines.

Yemen