Smash hit

By contrast, President Bush announced yesterday that America was unilaterally tightening its sanctions against the Burmese regime, and the European Union may now follow suit. The EU itself preparing for an urgent meeting to discuss the crisis.

After allowing the protests to continue for over a week, the numbers spiralling each day to reach 100,000 yesterday and Monday, the junta signalled last evening that its patience was ended, issuing orders banning all public gatherings of more than five people, and imposed a 9pm-5am curfew.

During the night, security officials arrived at the homes of prominent opposition supporters to arrest them and take them away. Zarganar, a comedian who has been arrested before for anti-government jokes and has publicly backed the monks, was taken away at midnight for what his family was told was "temporary questioning".

The authorities used the hours of darkness to block off six large Buddhist monasteries where many of the activist monks are staying, and to barricade the two holy shrines which have become the focus of the marches.

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As the protesters emerged in defiance of the orders, police and soldiers fired teargas to disperse columns of monks trying to push their way through the blockades sealing off the four main gates into the vast Shwedagon Pagoda shrine complex.

Firing shots into the air, beating their shields with batons and shouting orders to disperse, the police chased some of the monks and about 200 of their supporters, while other monks tried stubbornly to hold their place near the eastern gate as the marchers set off.

Some fell to the ground amid the chaos and at least one monk was seen struck with a baton. There were unconfirmed reports of others being beaten. Up to 200 maroon-robed monks with saffron sashes were arrested outside the shrine, a move likely to enrage ordinary people in Burma who have a deep reverence for the clergy.

Nonetheless a defiant column of around 3,000 monks and 4,000 civilians managed to set off for the Sule Pagoda, some monks wearing surgical masks in an attempt to counteract the effects of the teargas. Some of the marchers carried flags showing a fighting peacock, a symbol of Burma's democracy movement.

Numbers swelled as they neared the temple to nearly 10,000. The largest crowds yet had gathered to cheer as the march reached its destination, but the spectators were sent scattering by troops firing over their heads.

The demonstrators appear to have been buoyed up by the support they have received from abroad, turning to applaud the British Embassy as they marched past it, according to Mark Canning, the British Ambassador in Rangoon.

Mr Canning visited the junta on Tuesday at its newly-built capital carved out of the Burmese jungle, hoping to urge restraint, but said that the discussions were very difficult and there was "no meeting of minds".

The existence of mobile phone cameras and other modern communications technologies in Burma has made it easier for the protesters to get their message out to the outside world than during the last round of major demonstrations in 1988, when soldiers fired indiscriminately on peaceful crowds, killing 3,000.

In Mandalay, Burma’s second largest city, 10,000 demonstrators marched unhindered, watched by soldiers armed with assault rifles who had earlier been deployed around the Mahamuni Paya Pagoda, erecting a barricade and barbed wire at the gate.

In 1988, the last time Burma saw such mass protests, soldiers fired into crowds of peaceful demonstrators killing an estimated 3,000 people.

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