YANGON, Myanmar - The government said its security forces opened fire Wednesday on demonstrators who failed to disperse, killing one person, and witnesses said police beat and dragged away dozens of Buddhist monks in the most violent crackdown against the protests that began last month in Myanmar.

While dissident groups reported as many as five dead, including monks, the military juntas announcement on state radio and television was the first acknowledgment that force has been used to suppress the protests and the first admission that blood had been shed. The dissidents also said about 300 monks and activists were arrested.

Responding to calls by world leaders, the U.N. Security Council will hold closed consultations on Myanmar later Wednesday. The session will be briefed by Ibrahim Gambari, the secretary-generals special envoy on Myanmar, said U.N. deputy spokeswoman Marie Okabe.

Myanmars government said the security forces fired after the crowd of 10,000 people, including so-called monks, failed to disperse at Yangons Sule Pagoda. It said the police used minimum force.

The dead man, aged 30, was apparently hit by a ricocheting shell, the announcement said.

It said the wounded, two men aged 25 and 27, and a 47-year-old woman, were not hurt by gunshots but rather from being caught in a melee.

Witnesses who were known to the AP said they had seen two women and one young man with gunshot wounds in the chaotic confrontations.

Reports from exiled Myanmar journalists and activists in Thailand said security forces had shot and killed as many as five people in Yangon. The reports could not be independently confirmed by The Associated Press.

The U.S. is very troubled
Zin Linn, information minister for the Washington-based National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma, which is Myanmars self-styled government-in-exile, said at least five monks were killed, while an organization of exiled political activists in Thailand, the National League for Democracy-Liberated Area said three monks had been confirmed dead, and about 17 wounded.

Exiled Myanmar media reported similar figures, citing witnesses.

A Norway-based dissident radio station, the Democratic Voice of Burma, said that one monk was killed and several injured in clashes in downtown Yangon.

The security forces fired warning shots and tear gas to try to disperse the crowds of demonstrators while hauling away defiant Buddhist monks into waiting trucks the first mass arrests since protests in this military dictatorship erupted Aug. 19.

About 300 monks and activists were arrested across Yangon after braving government orders to stay home, according to an exile dissident group, and reporters saw a number of cinnamon-robed monks, who are highly revered in Myanmar, being dragged into military trucks.

If these stories are accurate, the U.S. is very troubled that the regime would treat the Burmese people this way, said National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said in Washington. We call on the junta to proceed in a peaceful transition to democracy.