Bahrain Mirror-Reuters: A "terrorist blast" slightly injured a woman near the Bahraini capital on Thursday, the Interior Ministry said on its Twitter account, in the latest in a series of explosions in the small Western-allied kingdom.

The ministry said the explosion happened in the village of Sanabis, west of Manama and that police was at the scene but gave no further details.

Tensions have been rising in Bahrain amid a government crackdown on opposition groups and activists it says are stirring up sectarian strife in the kingdom, where the U.S. Fifth Fleet is based.

Shi'ite Muslims in the Sunni-ruled kingdom complain of marginalization, a charge the government denies.

A man and his wife were slightly injured in an explosion in Sitra island, south of Manama last week. The explosion coincided with the sixth anniversary of pro-democracy Arab Spring protests that rocked the island kingdom in 2011.

The island kingdom crushed the protests with help from neighboring Gulf Arab states but tensions continued to simmer, growing from time to time into small protests.

On Feb. 5, another bomb exploded on the outskirts of Manama, damaging cars but causing no injuries, in what the Interior Ministry also described as a terrorist act.

Last month, Bahrain executed three men convicted of killing three policemen in a 2014 bomb attack. Bahrain accuses non-Arab Iran of fanning unrest and supporting militants. Iran denies involvement.

Arabic Version