Bahrain admits US Patriot missile hit residential area, injured dozens
Al Mayadeen | March 21, 2026
Bahrain’s government has admitted that a US Patriot air defense system was involved in the March 9 interception over the Sitra residential area that left dozens of civilians injured, Reuters reported.
This admission directly refutes the account offered by US Central Command, which had attributed the casualties to an Iranian drone strike.
In a statement to Reuters, a Bahraini government spokesperson said the Patriot system intercepted an Iranian drone, insisting that the operation “prevented a drone strike and saved lives.”
CENTCOM had previously maintained that an Iranian drone directly struck a residential neighbourhood. Bahrain’s admission that a Patriot missile was involved now places both accounts in open contradiction with the footage and with each other.
Video published by Drop Site News shows an air-defense interceptor descending following a failed interception attempt, with an impact occurring off-camera shortly afterward. The images strongly suggest it was the interceptor, not an Iranian drone, that struck the residential area, injuring 32 civilians, including children, with four reported in critical condition.
Whose lives were being saved?
The Iranian missiles and drones at issue were directed at US military bases in Bahrain, installations that a significant portion of the Bahraini population regards as an occupying presence, which secures the authoritarian order and is complicit in the genocide in Gaza and the war waged on Iran and Lebanon.
Had those bases not existed on Bahraini soil, no Iranian missile would have targeted Bahrain, and no Bahraini civilian in Sitra would have been injured. The only lives the Patriot system could plausibly claim to have saved were those inside the bases themselves, the very presence most Bahrainis have long demanded be ended.
Death penalty for documenting the damage
Rather than launching an independent inquiry into how a US missile system came to strike a residential neighbourhood, Bahraini authorities have moved to prosecute those who documented the aftermath.
The kingdom’s Public Prosecution is seeking the death penalty for several citizens charged with photographing locations where photography is allegedly prohibited, in what prosecutors framed as “high betrayal”.
During court proceedings, they described the situation as “brutal Iranian aggression” and called for “maximum penalties, without the slightest mercy,” specifying that this meant capital punishment.
162 arrested, crackdown still ongoing
According to the Prisoners Affairs Authority in Bahrain, 162 citizens, including men and women, have been detained since the onset of the US-Israeli war on Iran, with only five released as of March 18.
Detentions have targeted citizens who filmed Iranian strikes on US military bases in the region, individuals who publicly expressed solidarity with those operations, as well as citizens who participated in peaceful protests denouncing the war and the assassination of martyred Iranian Leader Sayyed Ali Khamenei.
The Prisoners’ Affairs Authority warned that the documented figure almost certainly undercounts the actual number of arrests, as raids and detention operations were still ongoing at the time of reporting.
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From the Archives
The Heirs of Meyer Lansky Want Compensation from Cuba. They Shouldn’t Get a Dime.
By Jack Colhoun | History News Network | June 19, 2016
Meyer Lansky
The heirs of Meyer Lansky, the impresario of the North American Mafia gambling colony in Cuba (1933-1958) are betting on a big payback from the negotiations between the United States and Cuba to normalize relations between the two countries. Compensation claims by U.S. citizens or businesses for properties nationalized by the Cuban revolution are among the issues under discussion.
Lansky’s daughter Sandi, her son Gary Rapoport, and her brother Paul have filed a compensation claim against Cuba for the Riviera Hotel and Casino with the U.S. Foreign Claims Settlement Commission. The Cuban revolution confiscated the Riviera and other Mafia-owned properties after it toppled the gangster-linked regime of General Fulgencio Batista in 1959.
“It was through my grandfather’s hard work that the hotel was built,” Rapoport told the U. K. Daily Mail Online on December 23, 2015. “We are his natural relations . . . . By right, it should be our property.” He says the Riviera is valued at $70 million. The Tampa Bay Tribune, Reuters, and Haaretz have also covered the story.
The Riviera, which overlooks the Straits of Florida, was the crown jewel of Lansky’s casinos, hotels, and nightclubs in Havana. When the Riviera opened in December 1957, it was the largest Mafia-owned hotel-casino outside Las Vegas. The hotel’s 440 double rooms were booked solid for the winter season of 1957-1958.
However, the narrative that the success of the Riviera was the product of Meyer Lansky’s “hard work” is undercut by Lansky’s own assessment of his arrangement with Batista. … continue
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