Police firing tear gas clashed with hundreds of stone-throwing youths in Bahrain on Saturday, February 16 in heightened unrest that could complicate new efforts to end political deadlock in the strategically placed Gulf Arab kingdom, Reuters said.

The violence has clouded the atmosphere around talks begun on February 10 between the mostly Shi'ite Muslim opposition and the Sunni Muslim-dominated government to find a way out of the impasse over Shi'ite demands for more democracy.

Witnesses said the confrontation, in which some of the hundreds of opposition demonstrators also threw petrol bombs at police, followed the funeral of a teenager the opposition said was killed in clashes between police and activists on Thursday.

The disturbance in the village of Sanabis west of the capital Manama was the latest in a series of skirmishes between Shi'ite youths and police since Thursday, when opposition activists commemorated the second anniversary of a pro-democracy revolt in the U.S.-allied state.

The kingdom, base for the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet, has been in political turmoil since the protests erupted in 2011, led by majority Shi'ites demanding an end to the monarchy's political domination and full powers for parliament.

Thirty-five people died during the unrest and two months of martial law that followed, the government said, although the opposition puts that number at more than 80. The government has accused opposition groups of being linked to Shi'ite power Iran.