Several hundred young monks in military-ruled Burma took a group of government officials hostage inside their monastery today and burned four of their cars.
The officials in the town of Pakokku, 600km (370 miles) northwest of Rangoon, had gone to the monastery to apologise for soldiers firing shots over the heads of protesting monks yesterday, a witness said.
They had also wanted to ask the abbot of the Mahawithutayama monastery, the town's biggest, to prevent monks from taking part in the protests across Burma in the last two weeks against soaring fuel prices.
A crowd of up to 1,000 people gathered outside the gates.
Soldiers had fired the warning shots to halt a protest march of up to 500 Buddhist monks waving banners condemning huge fuel price increases last month and reciting Buddhist scriptures.
It was the first time troops had been called in against a rare outbreak of dissent to which the military government responded by arresting leading dissidents and sending pro-junta gangs onto the streets of Rangoon to break up protests.
More than 100 people have been arrested in the crackdown.