Bahrain said on Sunday it had broken an Iranian-linked “terrorist cell” suspected of involvement in a bomb attack on a police bus in February and plotting to assassinate senior officials, state news agency BNA reported.

The agency quoted an Interior Ministry statement as saying that the 14-member cell was working under direct supervision from two exiled Bahrainis living in Iran, one of them recently designated by the United States as a “global terrorist.”

Tensions have been rising in the kingdom since last year after authorities stepped up a crackdown on dissent, banning the main opposition group al-Wefaq, arresting a leading activist and critic of the government and revoking the citizenship of the spiritual leader of the country’s majority Shi’ites.

BNA said that six of the arrestees received military training in camps under Iranian Revolutionary Guard supervision, five had been trained by the Iraqi Hezbollah group and three received training in Bahrain.

They are suspected of a bomb attack on a bus in February that injured five police officers, the agency said. The group is also suspected of plotting to attack “senior officials,” the statement said but gave no further details.

Read the whole story from Reuters.

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