Myanmar’s junta arrested more people on Wednesday hours after the departure of a UN envoy who came to the country to try to end a ruthless crackdown on protests which sparked international outrage.

At least eight truckloads of prisoners were hauled out of downtown Yangon, the former Burma’s biggest city and centre of last week’s monks-led protests against decades of military rule and deepening economic hardship, witnesses said.

In one house near the Shwedagon Pagoda, the holiest shrine in the devoutly Buddhist country and starting-point for the rallies, only a 13-year-old girl remained. Her parents had been taken, she said.

“They warned us not to run away as they might be back,” she said after people from rows of shophouses were ordered onto the street in the middle of the night and many taken away.

The crackdown continued despite some hopes of progress by UN special envoy Ibrahim Gambari on his mission to persuade junta chief Than Shwe to relax his iron grip and open talks with detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, whom he met twice.

Singapore, chair of the Association of South East Asian Nations of which Myanmar is a member, said it “was encouraged by the access and cooperation given by the Myanmar government to Mr Gambari”.

Gambari, in Singapore on his way back to New York but unlikely to say anything publicly before speaking to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, was expected to return to Myanmar in early November, UN sources said.

But there were no indications of how his mission and international pressure might change the policies of a junta, which seldom heeds outside pressure and rarely admits UN officials.

Meanwhile, the junta released 80 monks rounded up last week, one of those freed said on Wednesday. The monk, in his mid-20s said he and 79 brethren were returned to their Mingala Yama monastery in Yangon.