True Burma death toll may never be known
Exclusive report by Graeme Jenkins in RangoonLast Updated: 2:08am BST 28/09/2007A crowd of around 3,000 people, with six monks at the front, faced the riot police and soldiers across barbed wire.
Photos show 'death' of Japanese man Your view: What should the world do? Beyond them shone the great gold dome of the Sule Pagoda. When three trucks of soldiers drew up the crowd began to run.
Seconds later, without warning, there were several cracks of automatic gunfire.
A Japanese man carrying a camera fell to the ground, grimacing in pain.
A few minutes later the soldiers removed his limp body. It took six of them to do so.
Many people have been shot in Rangoon yesterday and the true death toll may never be known.
Japan later confirmed that a journalist, Kenji Nagai, 50, had been killed.
The Burmese Government said nine people were killed, which is almost certainly a gross understatement.
Automatic gunfire rang out across the city all afternoon. In many cases it appears to have been directed at groups of unarmed protesters.
According to one version the army often moves in three trucks because there is one platoon to shoot, one to pick up the bodies and one to clear up afterwards.
One witness said that the government has dug a pit in the centre of a football field near the Shwedagon Pagoda and surrounded it with a bamboo fence. Its purpose, up to this point, is unknown.
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