YANGON, Myanmar — Myanmar security forces opened fire on Buddhist monks and other pro-democracy demonstrators Wednesday for the first time in a month of anti-government protests, killing at least one man and wounding others in chaotic confrontations across Yangon.
Dramatic images of the protests, many transmitted from the secretive Southeast Asian nation by dissidents using cell phones and the Internet, emphasized the escalating faceoff between the military regime and its opponents.
Clouds of tear gas and smoke from fires hung over streets, and defiant protesters and even bystanders pelted police with bottles and rocks in some places. Onlookers helped monks escape arrest by bundling them into taxis and other vehicles and shouting “Go, go, go, run!”
The government said one man was killed when police opened fire during the ninth consecutive day of demonstrations, but dissidents outside Myanmar, also known as Burma, reported receiving news of up to eight deaths.
Some reports said the dead included monks, who are widely revered in Myanmar, and the emergence of such martyr figures could stoke public anger against the regime and escalate the violence.
As the stiffest challenge to the generals in two decades, the crisis that began Aug. 19 with protests over a fuel price hike has drawn increasing international pressure on the isolated regime, especially from its chief economic and diplomatic ally, China.
The United States and the European Union issued a joint statement decrying the assault on peaceful demonstrators and calling on the junta to open talks with democracy activists, including detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace laureate.
John Dale, an associate faculty member of George Mason University’s Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, said the involvement of monks had made it clear the demonstrations would not peter out and it was surprising the military held back this long.
“Now that it’s turned violent, there’s high-risk activity,” Dale said. “The regime signaled they are sincerely prepared to use violence.”
There was no sign the government had any intention of backing down, and monks said the violence would not deter them from pressing on with what has become the most sustained anti-junta protest since a failed 1988 democracy uprising. In that crisis, soldiers shot into crowds of demonstrators, killing thousands.
The junta issued an edict late Tuesday banning gatherings of more than five people, but the order was ignored by democracy activists and the public alike Wednesday.
The number of protesters seemed a bit less than on Tuesday, but thousands massed at the golden Shwedagon Pagoda, including monks, students, members of Suu Kyi’s democracy movement and activists waving flags emblazoned with the fighting peacock — a symbol of Myanmar’s democracy movement.
Police fired tear gas and made some arrests trying unsuccessfully to scatter the demonstrators. Protesters marched off toward the Sule Pagoda in the heart of Yangon, also known as Rangoon, but were later blocked by military trucks and security officers with riot shields, clubs and guns. Groups of marchers then fanned out into other streets, chased by security forces.
Officers fired warning shots and tear gas trying to disperse the main group and began dragging monks into army trucks — the first mass arrests since protests against the military dictatorship erupted Aug. 19.
Reporters saw some monks beaten, and an exile dissident group said about 300 monks and other protesters had been arrested in small clashes across Myanmar’s biggest city.
Myanmar’s government said security forces fired when a crowd that included what it called “so-called monks” refused to disperse at the Sule Pagoda and tried to grab weapons from officers. It said police used “minimum force.”
The junta statement, read on state radio and television Wednesday night, said a 30-year-old man was killed by a police bullet. It said two men aged 25 and 27 and a 47-year-old woman also were hurt when police fired, but did not specify their injuries.
Khim Maung Win, deputy editor of the Democratic Voice of Burma, an opposition-run shortwave radio service based in Norway, said five monks and three civilians were reported killed and at least four seriously injured.
Demonstrators tried to shame one group of soldiers by chanting: “You are the army of the people, we are feeding you! Be just to us!”
When words failed to move the 70 soldiers and the crews of two fire trucks being used for crowd control, people began hurling stones and the line gave way to allow protesters through, many of them monks headed back to their monasteries.
“They will kill us, monks and nuns. Maybe we should go back to normal life as before,” said a young nun near the scenes of chaos. But a student watching the arrival of the demonstrators said, “If they are brave, we must be brave. They risk their lives for us.”
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