Friday, 28 September 2007
The US has banned dozens of members of Burma's military government from obtaining US travel visas because of ongoing violence against protesters.
A state department spokesman said more officials would be added to the list if they were judged responsible for human rights abuses.
Reports from Burma say military may have succeeded in limiting the scale of the protests in the main city, Rangoon.
A UN special envoy, Ibrahim Gambari, will arrive in Burma on Saturday.
The White House said Mr Gambari should be allowed to meet "anyone he wants to meet", including military and religious leaders and opposition figurehead Aung San Suu Kyi.
News of the ongoing protests and government fightback in Burma slowed on Friday as the regime appeared to cut off internet and mobile phone communications into and out of the country.
The BBC's South East Asia correspondent, Jonathan Head, says Burma's rulers have turned their backs on the world and the torrent of outrage their actions have provoked.
The first opportunity to communicate that outrage will be when Mr Gambari arrives in the country to persuade the generals to put a stop to the crackdown, he adds.
Human rights abuses
In a statement, the US state department said more than three dozen military and government officials - and their families - would now be ineligible to receive US visas.
On Thursday the US Treasury said would freeze any US assets belonging to 14 Burmese government and military officials.
The new measures mark the latest tightening of a 10-year-old sanctions regime.
Meanwhile, Japan has said it will review its aid programmes after a Japanese journalist was shot dead during the demonstrations in Rangoon.
Video footage of Kenji Nagai apparently being shot by a Burmese soldier was broadcast around the world on Friday.
Warning shots
The violent suppression of anti-government protesters continued for a third day on Friday, with soldiers and police baton-charging crowds who tried to stage marches.
The security presence in the main city was the heaviest yet seen, with all the main roads into central Rangoon blocked. 
Troops sealed off the key religious sites in Rangoon, including the Shwedagon and Sule pagodas - the focal points of some of the larger protests earlier in the week.
Police also surrounded five monasteries to prevent Buddhist monks - who have been spearheading the demonstrations - from taking to the streets.
A witness told the BBC that a number of people were killed in Friday's violence. Burmese officials said nine people were killed on Thursday.
Later, the UK Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, said he believed the loss of life in Burma had been "far greater" than that reported by the authorities.
Mr Brown said he hoped the combined international pressure from the US, China, the EU and UN would "begin to make the regime see this cannot continue".
Internet severed
Information from Burma has become increasingly patchy. Internet access has been cut in Rangoon and is only partially available elsewhere. 
Burmese sources told the BBC that international mobile phone signals have been interrupted and soldiers are searching people for cameras and mobile phones.
Dissidents have been using the internet to get pictures and video of the protests and the military crackdown to international news outlets - who then fed them back into Burma via the internet and satellite TV.
But eyewitnesses managed to contact the BBC on Friday to say that the government was sending bus-loads of vigilantes into the main city to attack the demonstrators.
They said a temporary prison had been set up at an old race course for the hundreds, possibly thousands, of people detained in recent days.
The atmosphere was described as extremely tense, with a palpable sense of fear on the streets.
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