Manama: Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Secretary-General Abdul Lateef Al Zayani has joined a chorus of regional and international condemnations of the terror blast in a village west of the Bahraini capital that killed one policeman and injured seven people, including a couple and an infant.

In a statement he issued on Saturday, Al Zayani strongly denounced the terror bombing, saying it trespassed on all human values and lofty principles, and called upon international organisations to step up all efforts to root out terrorist groups and masterminds and dry up their sources of funding.

Al Zayani commended the efforts of the Bahraini security agencies to arrest the perpetrators of the blast and enforce the law and reiterated the stance of all GCC states in support of Bahrain.

The GCC backed all the measures taken by the Kingdom to preserve its security and stability and protect citizens and residents from the foreign-aided and abetted terrorist crimes, he said, Bahrain News Agency (BNA) reported.

The GCC, set up in 1981, comprises Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

In Cairo, Arab league Secretary General Nabeel Al Araby condemned the deadly attack, saying that the murderous attempts to undermine Bahrain’s security and stability will not achieve their despicable goals.

“The Arab League stands fully with Bahrain in its war against terrorism and supports all the measures it takes to tackle this dangerous phenomenon that requires concerted regional and international efforts,” he said.

Al Araby said that Arab states were determined to use all means to confront and uproot terrorism.

Kuwait, Jordan and the UAE also expressed their condemnation of the attack and stressed support for tackling all forms of terrorism.

The interior ministry on Friday evening said one policeman was killed and four others injured, including one seriously, in the terrorist blast.

Three civilians, a couple driving in their car and an infant also riding with his parents in their vehicle, were also injured in the attack, the ministry posted on its Twitter account.

The injured civilians were a Bahraini citizen and his wife who were passing near the area where the blast happened and an infant who was with a parent, the ministry said.

Public Security Chief Major-General Tariq Hassan Al Hassan said that two homemade bombs were remotely detonated in the blast.

“The explosion occurred as security patrols were carrying out their duty to ensure the safety of the main road in the village after it was blocked by terrorist thugs,” Al Hassan said, BNA reported.

Search and investigation operations launched after the blast resulted in the arrest of several suspects, the interior ministry said.

The blast in Karranah occurred exactly one month after a bomb killed two policemen and wounded six in Sitra, south of Manama. The attack was the deadliest in Bahrain in months.

According to BNA, preliminary details indicated that the explosives used in the Karranah blast resembled some seized during an attempt to smuggle them alongside weapons.

On July 25, the ministry said it had foiled an attempt to smuggle highly dangerous explosives and several automatic weapons and ammunition.

One of the suspects arrested in the smuggling attempt had received paramilitary training in August 2013 in a camp in Iran, the ministry said. He and another suspect confessed they coordinated with Iranians to receive four suits in the open sea from two men in a ship. The suspects’ own ship afterwards headed towards Bahrain.

The ministry added the arrested suspects admitted they were involved in two previous smuggling attempts, the first towards the end of 2013 and the second in early 2014.

Their attempts were carried out under the guise of fishing trips during which they transported the smuggled explosives and weapons from Iranian boats, BNA said.