Troops threaten gunshot
27.9.2007. 20:28:30
 Buddhist monks pray at a riot police's road block in downtown Rangoon. (AAP)
Thousands of protesters emptied the streets of Rangoon after Burma's soldiers issued an ultimatum threatening "extreme action" unless the crowd dispersed.
Pockets of people remained on balconies and bridges, as soldiers and police worked systematically through the city centre to ensure that no protesters remained.
At least 100 people were arrested and thrown into military trucks after the ultimatum.
Security forces had earlier fired warning shots, but the crowd only broke up after soldiers issued their warning.
"We will give 10 minutes. If you fail to leave, we will take extreme action," soldiers shouted in loudspeakers on a street in downtown Rangoon.
"Everyone on the roads and in the streets, everyone must leave immediately," they said.
Earlier, one protester fell after shots were fired, witnesses said.
It was not known if he was alive or dead or whether he had been hit by bullets or smoke bomb canisters fired by police near the Sule Pagoda, end-point of more than a week of marches.
After telling people to clear the area in 10 minutes, the soldiers advanced up the street away from the pagoda, their rifles at their sides. Police banged their rattan riot shields with batons.
"It's a terrifying noise," one witness said.
Apart from the odd terrified pedestrian scurrying for cover, a crowd of 100 people stood on the road 500 meters from the soldiers, who halted at a road junction near the central railway station.
A tense stand-off ensued.
In chaotic scenes in the city centre, protesters also stopped a truck carrying bricks and used them to pelt a police post near the Traders Hotel.
Pro-junta civilian gangs were also deployed in the heart of the former capital, a city of five million people.
Witnesses told Reuters that tear gas and warning shots were fired in clashes between crowds and soldiers and riot police who had raided some monasteries in South Okkalapa in the former Burma's remote northeast.
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