Smash hit

Bob Davis, the Australian ambassador to Burma, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that the death toll was probably higher.

“We spoke to a number of people overnight last night before the curfew provisions applied [and] we have individual reports from them of seeing ... significantly more than that number of dead being removed from the scene,” Mr Davis told ABC radio. “Several multiples of the [number] acknowledged by the authorities.”

An Asian human rights group said that eight people had been killed in one incident in northeast Rangoon yesterday, but that the bodies had been taken away by soldiers. It is not known if those eight were part of the official death toll.

Until today, dramatic images and accounts of the protests and the junta's crackdown, filmed by Burmese activists and by a handful of foreign journalists, had been pouring out of the country by text, weblog and e-mail.

Who will win? Can the world help?

What can the world do about the situation in Burma? Will it make any difference? Who, if anyone, can really have an influence?

Multimedia

• In pictures: Burma violence

• Video: protests in Rangoon

BACKGROUND

• Burmese bloggers defy the censors

• After 45 years, is this the end?

• How monks became threat to regime survival

• World split over response to Burma crisis

• Burma: a travellers' guide

Related Links

• The day Burma was silenced

• Burmese bloggers defy the censors

Multimedia

• In pictures: Burma violence

The junta appeared to be aware that this was damaging, as yesterday anyone found with cameras or cameraphones on the streets was beaten by security forces.

Rosalind Russell, a Western journalist in Rangoon, told Sky News: "We have been told that the internet is down for maintenance. There is only one server in the country.

"When that is down, no one has access to the internet or the ability to send out news reports or pictures."

Ms Russell said that there was concern about the plight of Burma's monks, who – as in many southeast Asian countries – are forbidden from storing or cooking food, and are fed each day by alms from the public.

"This morning it seems that the monks haven't come out of their monasteries. There is even some question whether they are there at all. There are some reports that the monasteries are empty, that the monks have been bussed out of the city. Certainly we are not seeing the usual trails of red-robed monks around the streets."

Hundreds of monks and protesters are said to have been detained yesterday in brutal overnight raids on at least ten monasteries and the homes of democracy activists.

In one small concession the military has agreed to admit the UN special envoy Ibrahim Gambari, who is now in Bangkok waiting for a visa.

President Bush has thanked China, the closest the junta has to an ally, for helping to win consent to a visit by Mr Gambari, whose job is to try to end the harshest crackdown since 1988 when an estimated 3,000 people were killed.

The junta told diplomats summoned to its jungle capital, Naypyidaw, that it was "committed to showing restraint in its response to the provocations," one of those present said.

David Miliband, the British Foreign Secretary, in his first speech to the United Nations insisted that violence by the Burmese regime against peaceful protesters must stop.

"Let us today send a message to the monks on the streets of Burma: We support your demand for a democratic Burma," he said. "And let us take a message from the monks on the streets of Burma: the human desire for freedom knows no bounds of race or religion or region."

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