More than 1,000 Saudi troops rushed to the rescue of Bahrain’s royal family on Monday as neighbouring Gulf states backed the Sunni rulers’ attempts to confront a popular uprising by a mainly Shia opposition.
As the Saudi troops crossed into Manama, the capital of Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates said it had also sent 500 police officers to help quell unrest in the tiny kingdom of less than 600,000 people. The Manama regime appealed on Sunday for help from its partners in the Gulf Co-operation Council, the regional grouping.
The cross-border intervention in the strategically important state, home to the US Fifth Fleet, dramatically raises the stakes in Bahrain’s political standoff, which has pitted the Shia majority against the Sunni al-Khalifa royal family.