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Bahraini school

offices set ablaze

MANAMA: Arsonists set fire to the offices of a Bahraini school, destroying student files but causing no casualties in the latest incident of anti-government unrest, officials said on Wednesday.

"The attack by saboteurs took place Tuesday at dawn before students and teachers arrived," a government official said. The fire gutted the secretary's office while a personal computer and a photocopy machine were also stolen.

Many students stayed home from school on Wednesday while four security vans with armed police guarded the building in Sitra, a mainly Shiite Moslem area southeast of the capital Manama, witnesses said.

Dozens of schools have been ransacked or hit by arsonists in 16 months of unrest.

Police overnight on Tuesday broke up several anti-government protests in the Shiite villages of Jid Hafs, Diraz and Bani Jamra, west of Manama.-AFP