YANGON, Sept 5: Soldiers in army-ruled Myanmar fired warning shots on Wednesday to halt a protest march of 500 Buddhist monks, the first time troops have been called in against a rare two-week outbreak of dissent, a resident said.

The monks in Pakokku, around 600 km northwest of Yangon, were waving banners condemning last month’s price hikes and reciting Buddhist scriptures when the army broke them up by firing shots over their heads, the woman told Reuters.

The Norway-based Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), a news service run by exile dissidents, said some of the thousands of onlookers cheering the march from both sides of the road were beaten.

There was no word on numbers of injured. Repeated phone calls to the town did not connect.

One bystander told DVB the soldiers fired “10 to 15 bullets, before they started to drag away the monks and beat up bystanders with bamboo sticks”.—Reuters