Myanmar junta cracks down on NLD after Aung San Suu Kyi arrest.

(From Agence France Presse)

Myanmar's military rulers cracked down on the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD), closing party branches and putting top members under house arrest after the detention of its leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

The Nobel peace laureate was put under "protective custody" in northern Myanmar along with 18 members of her entourage after clashes between her supporters and a pro-junta mob Friday left four dead and 50 injured, the government said.

She remained in custody Sunday at an undisclosed location, while two NLD offices in the southern town of Moulmein and the northern city of Mandalay were slammed shut and in Yangon, two senior NLD members were put under house arrest.

"I have been told by a family source that her father was summoned to the NLD office in Moulmein to effect the office's closure by the authorities," a party source told AFP.

In Mandalay, where Aung San Suu Kyi visited the first party office after her release from house arrest in May 2002, the NLD's distinctive red flags emblazoned with fighting peacocks had been torn down, another source said.

"They brought down the flags, but they kept the signboards intact," the source said.