YANGON: Military-run Myanmar on Friday extended the house arrest of democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi for another year, police sources said, ignoring international calls for her freedom.

Officials visited the Nobel peace prize-winner at her lakeside home here to inform her, they said. “We issued an order of further detention,” one source said.

Another police source confirmed her latest period of detention, which started in May 2003 and was set to expire this weekend, was extended by a year. “We informed her about the extension,” said the source, who was among the officials who visited Aung San Suu Kyi.

The 61-year-old has spent most of the past 17 years under house arrest and has little contact with the outside world, apart from her live-in maid and visits from her doctor.

The last time the opposition leader -- the only Nobel peace laureate in detention -- was able to leave her house was November 2006, when the junta allowed her to meet visiting UN envoy Ibrahim Gambari for one hour.—AFP