BURMA:Burmese troops and riot police battled to put an end to the tenth consecutive day of protests against the country's military dictatorship yesterday, as at least nine people were killed, including a Japanese photographer.
Fewer monks were seen on the streets yesterday as up to 500 had been arrested and many others confined to their quarters by soldiers, who raided six monasteries around the capital from dawn onwards.
Leaders of the National League for Democracy were also rounded up.
Pools of blood remained in monastery dormitories and stairwells, where the troops had smashed in windows and doors and beaten the young novices as they lay sleeping. In some raids shots were fired and one senior abbot at Moe Ngway monastery was said to have died later in the afternoon.
Security forces fired automatic weapons into crowds of pro-democracy demonstrators in Rangoon after they flouted warnings to clear the streets or face "extreme action".
Thousands of protesters played a deadly game of cat and mouse with the police and troops, continually dispersing as they were attacked and reforming to taunt the security forces who used tear gas, baton charges and live ammunition against them.
The ferocity of the attacks on the monks, the ransacking of monasteries that saw Buddhist relics vandalised and gold looted, according to diplomatic sources, shocked ordinary Burmese people, who revere the clergy.
It set the tone for a day that echoed months of violence in 1988 that ended with the massacre of 3,000 students and monks in a pro-democracy uprising.
Burmese people took to the streets yesterday in protests that were more spontaneous and chaotic than those of the previous days, when the monks had taken the lead, both protecting and being protected by their supporters.
Truckloads of soldiers and police were out in much greater force from early morning at strategic points around Rangoon. Barbed-wire barricades blocked roads and empty prison trucks awaited their cargo as water canon and fire engines stood by.
"Clearly the military had calculated that seven or eight days of protests needed to be brought to a halt," said Mark Canning, Britain's ambassador to Burma.
Security forces on foot and in vans toured the city with loudspeakers, urging residents to clear the streets within 10 minutes or face extreme force, warnings that fell on deaf ears among the crowds, who appeared not to care about the danger.
By lunchtime, a large, angry mob had gathered near the Sule pagoda, a focal point of earlier protests, despite the presence of large numbers of security forces at the Buddhist shrine.
Tánaiste Brian Cowen said he hoped those involved in the demonstrations for democracy in Burma would have greater success than in 1988, when 3,000 were "murdered on the streets" during public protests.
US president George W Bush yesterday asked states with influence over Burma to press it to stop using force against protesters, and the US treasury imposed sanctions on senior military government officials. -