Army troops in the poor and isolated Southeast Asian country "regularly attack their temporary encampments, killing and injuring them, perpetuating their life on the run," charged the London-based organisation.

 The groups of Hmong, a highland people, are remnants and descendants of members of a US-funded "Secret Army" who from the early 1960s fought communist Pathet Lao forces when the Vietnam War spilled into Laos.

 Credible estimates of how many Hmong remain on the run in the country's rugged interior range from several hundred to 3,000, said Amnesty in its report "Hiding in the Jungle -- Hmong under Threat."

 Unable to plant crops that could be spotted from the air, the Hmong forage for roots and leaves for survival and are close to starvation, said the report.

 "Children display the distended bellies and bleached hair of malnutrition," said Amnesty. "They have no access to health care, leaving the people open to diseases and infection from untreated wounds."

 Laos has denied any abuses against Hmong or the existence of insurgents who have in the past troubled security in the north of the country and have been blamed for ambushes on tourist buses which killed dozens of people in 2003.

 The "Secret Army," set up in 1961, was a CIA-funded irregular force led by Royal Lao Army Lieutenant Vang Pao, an ethnic Hmong who by the early 1970s commanded 30,000 troops, also including ethnic Lao and Thai mercenaries.

 When the Pathet Lao, allies of communist North Vietnam, seized power in 1975, they jailed tens of thousands of their former enemies.

 Around 300,000 Lao people, about half of them Hmong, fled the country, with many finding new homes in the United States and elsewhere.

 Nearly 7,000 Hmong still live in an informal refugee camp in northeastern Thailand, including many who are believed to be economic refugees.

 Many of the Hmong fighters who stayed behind and their families retreated to inaccessible forests, mostly around Phu Bia, the country's highest mountain, launching sporadic attacks on government forces.

 Today the insurgency has been largely quashed, and the isolated groups no longer pose a major military threat, but they continue to be hunted, said the report based on interviews with refugees, activists and journalists.

 "The groups frequently move camp to evade the Lao military, who have attacked them with AK-47s and grenades both inside their camps and outside when they search for food," said Amnesty. "Large numbers of Hmong, including children, have scars and wounds from bullets and shrapnel."

 Amnesty said little information was available on the Hmong in hiding, who have in recent years been visited by only a handful of journalists.

 But it said there were "multiple credible accounts over the past four years from a range of sources sufficient to conclude that there is a pattern of such attacks."

 In an April 2006 attack, Lao army troops killed 26 Hmong, including 17 children and several women, while they were foraging for food around 20 kilometres (12 miles) northeast of the tourist town of Vang Vieng.

 Amnesty said it was worried about 790 Hmong who surrendered in two groups in late 2006 as nothing had been heard from them since.

 The human rights group called on Laos to end persecution of the Hmong and to allow the UN refugee agency and other observers access to Hmong villages and groups that have surrendered to authorities.

 Amnesty also urged Thailand, ruled by a military government since a coup last September, to stop the forced repatriations of Hmong to Laos.

 Thailand halted the attempted deportation of 153 refugees on January 30 after the men barricaded themselves in a cell. Bangkok later agreed to them being resettled in third countries.

Agence France Presse