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YANGON: Myanmar security forces raided a monastery and arrested at least 100 Buddhist monks on Thursday, tightening their grip after a violent crackdown on mass protests that left at least four people dead.
The country's ruling generals reasserted their control after a string of demonstrations led by the revered monks, whose presence helped bring as many as 100,000 people onto the streets to rally against the junta.
Witnesses said security forces stormed a monastery overnight in the eastern part of Yangon, the country's main city. Windows were smashed and bullet casings littered the ground, they said.
At least 100 monks were believed taken. Some who avoided arrest returned after daybreak, bleeding from wounds to their shaven heads. A few said they had got away by climbing into trees around the monastery.
Witnesses said a second monastery nearby was also raided, but there were no other details.
The raid came just hours after the government, facing the biggest wave of public anger in 20 years, made good on its vow to end the demonstrations that have erupted in cities across this poor and isolated nation.
Defying calls from the international community to pull back its troops, police and security forces beat protesters and opened fire to halt the rolling wave of demonstrations in Yangon.
Two monks were beaten to death and a third was shot dead while wrestling with a soldier to try to take away his weapon, senior Myanmar officials told AFP. A fourth person was shot dead, a hospital source said.
It was the first time the generals have used violence since the protests began, although there was no mass crackdown like that in 1988, when at least 3,000 people were killed to put down demonstrations.
But the international community voiced outrage at the junta, who have ruled the nation formerly known as Burma in one form or another since 1962.
"France will not accept the gagging of Myanmar's opposition," French President Nicolas Sarkozy said after meeting the head of Myanmar's self-proclaimed government in exile, Sein Win, in Paris.
The European Union and the United States said they were "deeply troubled" by the crackdown. The UN Security Council urged the junta to allow a UN envoy to visit.
There were several calls for China, Myanmar's main trading partner and chief ally, to use its influence with the secretive government. China has publicly said it will not intervene but that it wants stability in the country.
Yangon and the second city Mandalay remain under a dusk-to-dawn curfew. Yangon's streets were deserted on Thursday morning, and commuter buses avoided passing by the site where Wednesday's clashes occurred.
Shop doors were closed, but inside people could be seen huddling around short-wave radios, hoping to catch some news from foreign media about the clampdown.
The unrest began last month when the junta drastically raised the price of fuel overnight. The move left many here unable to afford even transport to their jobs.
The initial protests – rare enough in a country where the military quickly crushes any show of dissent – began with only a handful of demonstrators.
But hundreds of people lined the streets to cheer them on. After the monks joined the movement, numbers swelled and around 100,000 people have marched in Yangon daily since Monday.
- AFP/so
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