Burma's military junta has detained a local UN worker in Rangoon amid continuing arrests and global outrage over the regime's violent clampdown on dissent.
A 38-year-old UN staff member, her husband and two relatives were taken away by security authorities, UN resident coordinator Charles Petrie said.
"Some of our staff have been caught up in the arrests and while some have been released we have others who are still unaccounted for," he said.
"So it's something that's affecting, in fact, our operations."
According to reports from news agencies at least eight truckloads of people were arrested in the dead of night.
The pre-dawn arrests came just a day after UN special envoy Ibrahim Gambari left Burma, ending a four-day mission aimed at halting the regime's crackdown on protesters.
Last week's crackdown on peaceful protests, led by Buddhist monks, killed at least 13 people and saw more than 1,000 arrested, but diplomats in Rangoon have said that the true tolls may never be known.
Despite international condemnation of the junta's reaction, Burmese soldiers are trawling the country's biggest city warning that they are seeking out those suspected of taking part in the demonstrations.
Escape
Eyewitnesses inside Rangoon say there are scores of monks at the city's railway station attempting to leave.
Buses are said to be refusing to take monks on board because the drivers say if they are transporting them they will not be able to get petrol from the Government.
As a result, many are stranded at the bus stations, unable to get out of the city, but there are few monks elsewhere on the streets.
Reports say about 25 of them were arrested by security forces in a raid on a temple overnight.
Despite the new arrests, the regime has begun releasing some of the hundreds of monks being held at a disused technical school outside the capital since last week's mass protests.
One of those freed and other relatives said the junta released 80 monks and 149 women believed to be nuns.
Five local journalists, one of whom works for Japan's Tokyo Shimbun newspaper, were also released.
A freed 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 Rangoon shortly after midnight.
The monk said they had been held at a former government technical institute in northern Rangoon's Insein district and subjected to verbal, but not physical, abuse.
"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."
People living near some of the raided monasteries reported monks being hit, kicked and beaten as they were carted off in trucks.
Hundreds were detained and a diplomat who visited the Ngwe Kya Yan monastery said there were signs of "severe beating" at the gates.
The 149 released women, most of whom had shaven heads, suggesting they were Buddhist nuns, had been moved from the Insein technical institute to the Kyaikkasan racetrack three days before they were freed.
Another relative of an official involved said the dresses of two or three of the women, some of whom were in their 70s, were drenched in blood, and they had not been able to wash, but it was not immediately possible to verify the account.
State media say 10 people died in the crackdown but Foreign Minister Alexander Downer says he believes at least 30 people have died and 1,400 placed in detention.
"It's hard to know, but it seems to me that the number of 30, which is the number we've officially been using, is likely to be an underestimate," Mr Downer said.
Defecting
Meanwhile a Burmese military officer has fled to neighbouring Thailand, saying he refused orders to attack monks in last week's anti-junta protests.
"As a Buddhist myself, when I heard that monks had been shot dead on the streets and that other people had been shot dead, I felt very upset," he said in a video interview.
"As a Buddhist, I did not want to see such killing."
The army major's defection is the first known case of a military official fleeing the country since the junta last week ordered the crackdown.
Thai military intelligence officials have identified the officer, but he later requested that his name not be reported. The Thai officials said he was planning to request political asylum in Norway. © 2007 Australian Broadcasting Corporation
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