YANGON (AFP) — Six people suffered minor injuries in a small bomb blast Thursday in Myanmar's main city Yangon, a police official said, despite tight security on the one-year anniversary of mass anti-junta protests.
The blast hit at a bus stop outside City Hall in the downtown area and was the latest in a series of explosions in the military-ruled country this month.
"It was a small bomb blast. Altogether six people were slightly injured... They were sent to the hospital," said the police official, who did not want to be named as he was not authorised to speak to the media.
Military and police officials swiftly sealed off the area, and urged crowds gathered at the scene to disperse.
"I heard the blast," said one vendor near the park. "It was very loud."
Security has been tight around Yangon for days as the city silently marks the anniversary of anti-government demonstrations, which saw more than 100,000 people led by Buddhist monks flood the streets of Yangon a year ago this week.
Sporadic protests first broke out in late August 2007 over a hike in fuel prices, and slowly escalated. The military regime finally launched a crackdown on September 26, opening fire on the crowds.
The United Nations has said that 31 people were killed in the crackdown, while 74 people remain missing.
There has been no mention in Myanmar's tightly-controlled press of the anniversary of the protests.
Thursday's blast comes after two similar incidents this month.
On September 11, two people were killed and another 10 wounded by two bomb blasts at a video cafe northeast of Yangon, near a region hit by an ethnic insurgency, state media reported.
Those blasts followed an explosion days earlier on Yangon bus which injured three people.
Myanmar's junta has in the past blamed similar blasts on armed exile groups or ethnic rebels who have been battling the military rulers for decades, but the regime has also started pointing the finger at democracy activists.
State-run media earlier this month accused two members of detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) of bombing pro-government offices in July.
The NLD won a landslide victory in elections in 1990, but the junta never allowed it to take office and Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has been under house arrest almost constantly since.
The military has ruled Myanmar since 1962, partly justifying its grip on power by claiming the need to fend off ethnic rebellions.
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