Several hundred young monks in military-ruled Myanmar took a group of government officials hostage inside their provincial monastery on Thursday and burned four of their cars, a witness said.

The officials had gone to the monastery in the town of Pakokku, 600 km (370 miles) northwest of Yangon, to apologise for soldiers firing shots over the heads of protesting monks on Wednesday, the witness said.

They had also wanted to ask the abbot of the Mahawithutayama monastery, the town's biggest, to stop monks taking part in the sporadic marches that have broken out in the former Burma in the last two weeks against soaring fuel prices, she added.

A crowd of up to 1,000 people gathered outside the gates. There was no immediate sign of military or police.

Soldiers fired the warning shots to halt a protest march of up to 500 monks reciting Buddhist scriptures and waving banners condemning huge fuel price increases last month.

It was the first time troops had been called in during two weeks of rare dissent. Hitherto, the military had responded by arresting leading dissidents and sending pro-junta gangs onto the streets of Yangon to break up protests.

More than 100 people have been arrested in the crackdown, one of the harshest since the army crushed a nationwide uprising of monks, students and government workers in 1988, when around 3,000 people are thought to have been killed.

The military has been loathe to put soldiers on the streets, perhaps mindful of the 1988 bloodshed, a watershed moment in Myanmar's post-independence history.

Intervening against monks in Pakokku is particularly risky for the junta as the town is only 80 miles from the second city of Mandalay, the religious heart of a devoutly Buddhist nation and home to 300,000 monks. Historically, monasteries have played a major role in political uprisings, both in 1988 and in revolts against colonial master Britain.

A resident of Mandalay said the atmosphere in the town was very tense. News reports from dissident organisations suggest the generals who first seized power in 1962 have been pressing the heads of Mandalay's monasteries not to become involved.

"They seem to be more nervous. Once the monks in Mandalay start to rise, they won't be able to control it," a Yangon-based politician said this week.