YANGON - MYANMAR'S junta released 80 monks rounded up last week in a crackdown on the biggest anti-government protests in nearly 20 years, one of those freed said on Wednesday.

The monk, in his mid-20s but too nervous to give any more details of his identity, said he and 79 brethren were returned to their Mingala Yama monastery in Yangon shortly after midnight.

The remaining 16 of 96 arrested during a raid on the monastery - among hundreds arrested in similar raids on at least 15 Yangon monasteries - were expected to be freed soon, he said.

'We were forced to change into civilian dress before they interrogated us,' the monk said. 'They questioned us day and night but we were fed two meals a day.' On their return, they were allowed to wear their maroon monastic robes again, suggesting they were not being disrobed.

The monks were removed from the monastery by officials who said they were being taken to an early morning 'charity breakfast", the freed monk said.

'We were told a lie,' he said.

'Severe beating'
People living near some of raided monasteries reported monks being hit, kicked and beaten as they were carted off in trucks.

Hundreds were detained and a diplomat who visited one monastery said there were signs of 'severe beating' at the gates of the Ngwe Kya Yan monastery.

Nearly 150 women, some with shaven heads suggesting they were Buddhist nuns, had also been taken from the Insein technical centre to Kyakkasan racetrack in preparation for their release, a relative of an official involved said.

The person said the dresses of two or three of the women, some of whom were in their 70s, were drenched in blood.

It was not immediately possible to verify the account.

The monks have reported six of their brethren killed in the raids and clashes with riot police and soldiers.

A photograph posted on the exile Democratic Voice of Burma website shows the body of a monk lying in a ditch, although there has been no way to confirm any of the rumours sweeping across Yangon of monks being beaten and killed.

More arrests
junta arrested more people under the cover of darkness on Wednesday despite a crescendo of international outrage during a keenly watched UN mission to bring an end to a bloody crackdown on protests.

At least eight truckloads of prisoners were hauled out of downtown Yangon, the former Burma's biggest city and centre of monk-led protests against decades of military rule and deepening economic hardship, witnesses said.

In one house near the Shwedagon Pagoda, the holiest shrine in the devoutly Buddhist country and starting point for last week's rallies, only a 13-year-old girl remained. Her parents had been taken in the middle of the night, she said.

The crackdown continued despite some hopes of progress by UN envoy Ibrahim Gambari on his mission to persuade junta chief Than Shwe to relax his iron grip and open talks with detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, whom he met twice.

Singapore, current chairman of the Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean) of which Myanmar is a member, said it 'was encouraged by the access and cooperation given by the Myanmar government to Mr Gambari'.

UN sources said Mr Gambari expected to return in early November to Myanmar, whose generals seldom heed outside pressure and rarely grant UN officials permission to visit.

However, there were no indications of how his mission and international pressure might change junta policies.

So far, Asean's policy of 'constructive engagement' has worked no better than Western sanctions, and the continuing arrests indicate the junta has not been swayed by Gambari.

Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, the United Nations' human rights envoy for Myanmar, said in Geneva the number of those detained was now in the thousands.

'Violent repression'
The junta insists it dealt with the protests, which at their height filled five city blocks, with 'the least force possible' and said only 10 people were killed in the restoration of order.

It appears to believe it has beaten the biggest challenge to its power in nearly 20 years, which began with small marches against shock fuel price rises in August and swelled after troops fired over the heads of a group of monks.

It has re-opened Shwedagon and the Sule pagoda, the end point of the protest marches, after cordoning off a wide area around them and sending soldiers to virtually every street corner of Yangon, preventing crowds from coalescing.

It is also sending gangs through homes looking for monks in hiding, sweeping raids that western diplomats say are creating a climate of terror.

Ms Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, which won an election landslide in 1990 only to be denied power by the army, said 160 of its members and other activists had been detained.

In Mandalay, the former Burma's second city, witnesses said police and soldiers were everywhere, just as in Yangon.

Western governments and human rights groups say the toll is probably far higher than acknowledged officially and the passage of time is not reducing the level of international outrage.

In Geneva, the UN Human Rights Council, including China, the closest thing the junta has to an ally, condemned the junta's 'violent repression' and called on the generals to allow Mr Pinheiro to visit for the first time in four years.

'Light must absolutely be shed on what happened,' Mr Pinheiro told the council, which adopted a resolution deploring beatings, killings and detentions. Myanmar said the hearing was being used by 'powerful countries for political exploitation'.

In Washington, the Senate and House of Congress passed resolutions loaded with passionate language to condemn the crackdown, which included raids on monasteries and hauling off hundreds of Buddhist monks.

Myanmar, one of Asia's brightest prospects and the world's largest rice exporter when it won independence from Britain in 1948, is now one of the region's poorest countries despite an abundance of timber, gems, oil and natural gas.

It is also a big source of opium, the raw material of heroin, as well as amphetamines, smuggled logs and gems. -- REUTERS