Crowds of people taunted soldiers in the centre of Yangon on Friday, swearing at them and then running into side alleys of Myanmar's biggest city when the troops feigned a charge, a witness said.

Men were shouting at the soldiers in English: "We only want democracy."

The soldiers responded by mounting small charges and telling them through loudspeakers to disperse.

On Thursday, they used a similar tactic to clear the streets, telling a crowd of more than 1,000 chanting demonstrators they had 10 minutes to clear the area or risk being shot.

As the cat-and-mouse game continued, trucks of soldiers and riot police were sealing off the centre of the city, near the Sule Pagoda area, moving wooden and barbed-wire barricades block by block.

The mighty Shwedagon Pagoda, the former Burma's holiest shrine and starting point for a week of mass monk-led protest marches, had already been sealed off completely, witnesses said.

People are fearful of a repeat of Thursday's clashes in which at least nine people were killed when soldiers fired on crowds they chased through the streets.  -Reuters