Six dead including Japanese national, opposition radio

One of the dead in Rangoon was a Japanese national believed to have been a photo-journalist, the radio station's daily news editor Htet Aung Kyaw told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa in a telephone interview.

AFP meanwhile reported the first victim of the crackdown was a video journalist, Kenji Nagai, 50, who was working for APF News, a video and photo agency based in Tokyo.

His firm said Nagai worked on a contract and was dispatched in the past to trouble spots. He had entered Burma a few days ago before the crackdown.

DPA said other victims were thought to include four monks who were beaten to death in connection with overnight raids on Yangon monasteries, he said.

There were fewer monks in the crowds Thursday, partly since many were arrested in the overnight raids and that security forces have tried to block off the monasteries, according to the witness accounts received in Oslo.

Two senior leaders of Aung San Suu Kyi's opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) were arrested including spokesman Myint Thin, he said.

Demonstrations were staged in several parts of Rangoon, soldiers have fired automatic rifles at the crowds but injury tallies were not available.

In Mandalay, the second largest city, demonstrations were also staged. Information was sketchy since many phone lines were cut, but the station's sources said soldiers used an electric power line to disperse demonstrators.

In Kachin State in northern Burma near the Chinese border two monasteries were raided Tuesday evening and some 400 monks arrested, the radio station's sources said.

Demonstrations were also staged in the city of Mandalay, and witness accounts suggested solidiers used a live electric power line to disperse crowds, Htet Aung Kyaw said.

Earlier, the station's news editor Moe Aye said that an order had been issued to discharge patients from the main hospital, suggesting that the military were preparing to deploy violence against the protesters there.

The opposition radio station, funded by among others the governments of Norway, Denmark and Sweden, broadcasts via satellite and shortwave to Burma.

Thousands of laymen on Thursday carried forward an anti-military protest initiated by Burma's Buddhist monkhood with defiance against the country's hated junta, drawing gunfire that killed some civilians, including two foreigners.

Rangoon's streets, taken over by tens-of-thousands of marching monks in recent days, were replaced by angry but unarmed laymen after authorities cracked down on the clergy Wednesday and Thursday morning.           

At midday an estimated 10,000 laymen gathered near the Sule Pagoda, a flashpoint for the past 10 days of protests, shouting catcalls and clapping their hands in a show of contempt for the government troops around the temple.

After police issued a verbal warning and fired warning shots, the crowds scattered. A male Caucasian foreigner, believed to be a photographer, was shot dead as he tried to make his way through a blockade of soldiers, eyewitnesses said.

There were displays of increasingly violent dissent and brutal reprisals throughout the city.

About 1,000 villagers in South Okkalapa township on the eastern outskirts of Yangon attacked an army truck, pelting the soldiers on board with stones until they shot 10 tear gas canisters into the mob to make a getaway.

The villagers were reportedly outraged that the military had raided the Ngwe Kyar Yan monastery early Thursday morning, arresting monks and leaving its revered abbot severely beaten.

Witnesses said a lieutenant colonel leading three truckloads of soldiers in the raid beat some of his own soldiers when they refused to attack monks in the monastery.

Pitched battles followed between the soldiers and residents living near the monastery.

After dawn on Thursday, angry local residents gathered at the scene of the violence. Many of them were crying with rage.

"It is impossible to believe that the government would brutalize the holy monks," said one resident of the area who witnessed the melee. "The government is not doing this for stability. This is sacrilege to the religion we believe in."

A similar scene was witnessed later on Thursday at the intersection of Kyaikasan and Leydaungkan roads, in eastern Yangon, where hundreds of people blocked the road and faced off with soldiers.

After firing warning shots, the soldiers attacked the protesters, loading hundreds on to five trucks that moved them to nearby Kyaikasan Grounds, a public park turned holding centre.    

The protests continued Thursday evening, with reports that thousands of people were marching from Ahlone township to Kyimyiutine township in western Rangoon.   

"There are people willing to shoot and people willing to die," said one Western diplomat of the ongoing showdown in Rangoon.

Most monks stayed away from the day's protests, amid reports that authorities had raided several monasteries at around 2 am Thursday, arresting up to 100 monks. 

The ruling junta cracked down Wednesday on monk-led marches that started small on September 18 and peaked Monday with an estimated 100,000 participants.        

On Wednesday riot police and soldiers beat back monks and their laymen followers with batons and tear gas from the Shwedagon Pagoda and fired warning shots at the mob around the Sule Pagoda.

The state-run New Light of Myanmar newspaper claimed that the clash was sparked by protesters throwing stones at the security officers.

"On account of the unavoidable circumstances, the members of the security forces fired some shots employing the least force to disperse the mob," claimed the government mouthpiece.

It claimed one civilian was killed in the melee and two others wounded. Other sources said at least five people, including monks, died on Wednesday and more than 100 were injured.

Barricades and troops were in place Thursday morning at key sites in Yangon, including the Shwedagon Pagoda and Bogyoke Street, two of the main rallying spots for the past nine days of protests in the city.

Many schools were closed as fearful residents kept their children at home.

Roadblocks had been removed Thursday from the Pagoda Road that leads to Sule Pagoda, but the temple was heavily guarded.

Burma's 's monks, said to number 400,000, have a long history of political activism. The monkhood played a pivotal role in Burma's independence struggle from Great Britain in 1947 and the anti-military demonstrations of 1988 that ended in bloodshed.