Myanmar has agreed to release some 70 political prisoners, an official said Tuesday, after President Thein Sein vowed to free all dissidents by the end of the year.

"The president has signed an amnesty for about 70 political prisoners around the country," presidential adviser Hla Maung Shwe, a senior official at the Myanmar Peace Center, told Agence France Presse.

A small blast near an event by a radical Myanmar monk who stands accused of inflaming Buddhist-Muslim tensions has left five people injured in Mandalay, police said Monday.

"The scene was about 100 yards (90 meters) away from the preaching event," said an officer from police headquarters in the capital Naypyidaw who asked not to be named.

Myanmar on Saturday lifted a state of emergency imposed in a riot-hit area in March where dozens of people were killed in religious violence, state media said.

The order was revoked "as peace and stability has already been restored" in the town of Meiktila and surrounding areas, according to a notice in the New Light of Myanmar newspaper.

Myanmar President Thein Sein denied on Friday accusations of ethnic cleansing against Rohingya Muslims, saying the claims were part of a "smear campaign" against his government.

On a visit to Paris, Sein told France 24 television that his government was not guilty of the charges.

Myanmar President Thein Sein said on Monday that all political prisoners would be freed by the end of the year and that a ceasefire with ethnic groups was possible within weeks.

The former junta general's comments, made during his first visit to London, appear to be latest stage in reforms that Thein Sein has made since he took office in 2011.

British Prime Minister David Cameron on Monday urged Myanmar President Thein Sein to defend human rights as the former junta general made his first official visit to London.

Cameron said he was particularly concerned by violence targeting members of Myanmar's Rohingya Muslim minority in which hundreds of people have been killed.

President Thein Sein left Myanmar Sunday for a visit to Britain and France, an official said, as the former junta general looks to build on support for his much-lauded reforms.

"The president left Yangon this morning to visit Britain and France," a government official told AFP without giving further details of the visit, Thein Sein's second trip to Europe in months.

The thugs ordered Kyaw not to look as they killed his classmates, but the terrified teenager still caught glimpses of the merciless beatings as a wave of anti-Muslim killing engulfed his school town in central Myanmar, leaving dozens dead.

"They used steel chains, sticks and knives... there were hundreds of people. They beat anyone who tried to look at them," the 16-year-old told Agence France Presse.

Islamic nations on Wednesday called on U.N. leader Ban Ki-moon to do more to halt the "tyranny" they say Muslims are enduring in Myanmar.

Religious riots in Buddhist-majority Myanmar have cast a shadow over heralded political reforms since military rule ended two years ago. Envoys to the U.N. from Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) countries say the global body should pressure the Myanmar government over the troubles.

Four Muslim men have been jailed for murder following religious violence in central Myanmar in March that left dozens dead, an official said Wednesday.

The defendants were given sentences of between seven years and life imprisonment for their part in the deadly rioting in the town of Meiktila that mainly targeted Muslims and spread elsewhere in the Buddhist-dominated country.