Myanmar police raid homes as manhunt intensfies

YANGON, Aug 30 (Reuters) - Myanmar's military junta tightened the net on leaders of a rare string of protests today, raiding homes of known activists and their friends and distributing their photographs in a manhunt around Yangon.

''I know they've been after me,'' Suu Suu Nway, an outspoken critic of the former Burma's ruling generals, told Reuters by telephone. ''I heard they have sent pictures of three women activists, including me, to several of their offices.'' Fourteen people from a protest on Tuesday, videotaped and photographed by undercover agents, had now been picked up, she added.

The 34-year-old was roughed up by a pro-junta gang that broke up the march in northern Yangon against soaring fuel prices. Apart from a brief hospital check-up, she has been in hiding since.

''I'm not afraid of being arrested but I'm not feeling well at the moment,'' she said.

The opposition National League for Democracy said more than 100 people had been arrested in the week-long crackdown, one of the junta's most intense since it sent in troops to crush a mass uprising of students, monks and civil servants in 1988.

Up to 3,000 people are thought to have been killed.

Yesterday night, police and plainclothes officials raided homes in the north of the former capital, apparently looking for the few well-known activists to have evaded arrest so far.

''They didn't find the people they were after,'' one activist said. ''Some people heard them mentioning the names of some colleagues of Htin Kyaw.'' Htin Kyaw and an accomplice were dragged off by a junta-sponsored gang at the weekend after shouting slogans against declining living standards and military rule. It was the fourth time this year he had been arrested.

REUTERS PD RN1536