Some of the world's biggest phone giants will find out Thursday which two have won telecoms licences in Myanmar, an official said Thursday, ahead of an expected boom for the sector as the country embarks on a reform drive.

The tender was launched in the hope of quickly increasing mobile coverage across the country where less than 10 percent of the population having access to a telephone.

Myanmar and Thai authorities incinerated $400 million-worth of narcotics on Wednesday in a bid to tackle their reputations as hubs for illicit substances and mark World Drug Day.

Some 31 million methamphetamine tablets, nearly 300 kilograms (660 pounds) of crystal meth -- known as 'Ice' -- and 125 kilos of heroin were destroyed in an industrial park in the Thai city of Ayutthaya, according to the kingdom's Public Health Ministry.

Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi on Thursday declared her intention to run for the presidency as she sets her sights on elections due to be held in 2015.

Addressing world leaders and heads of business at a major forum in the capital Naypyidaw, the Nobel Peace laureate called for the amendment of the military-drafted constitution which prevents her from leading the country.

Myanmar's president said Tuesday his government would soon release all prisoners of conscience, as part of sweeping political reforms following the end of junta rule.

Myanmar has formed a committee to review the cases of political detainees and "all the prisoners of conscience will be free soon", President Thein Sein said in a radio address.

Troops patrolled the riot-scarred streets of a town in eastern Myanmar Thursday where hundreds of Muslims fled their homes after a new outbreak of religious violence left at least one dead.

Mobs armed with knives and sticks had roamed the streets of Lashio in Shan state during two previous days of fighting that saw a mosque and orphanage torched as sectarian strife spread to a new part of the country.

Myanmar's government called for calm Wednesday after mobs burned down a Muslim orphanage, a mosque and shops during a new eruption of religious violence in the east of the country.

The situation was "under control" after an overnight curfew was imposed in Lashio town in Shan State, according to police, which said the unrest was triggered by an attack on a local Buddhist woman by a Muslim man.

Houses and mosques were set ablaze by mobs in a town in eastern Myanmar after a Buddhist woman was allegedly "torched" by a Muslim man, authorities said Tuesday, in a fresh bout of religious violence.

An ethnic Shan-Muslim man was arrested after he "torched" a woman selling petrol, a police officer in the Shan State capital of Lashio told Agence France Presse under the condition of anonymity.

Myanmar's Aung San Suu Kyi Monday criticized a ban on Rohingya having more than two children in strife-torn Rakhine state as counter to human rights, in rare comments on the plight of the Muslim group.

The opposition leader, who has been accused by activists of failing to speak up for the marginalized Rohingya, said she opposed the controversial rule, imposed by the previous junta and reaffirmed recently by local authorities in the wake of deadly unrest.

Eleven people were killed and 16 injured after a bus rammed into a bridge after suffering a puncture in central Myanmar, state media reported Sunday.

The Yangon to Mandalay bus, which was carrying 27 passengers, hit a traffic island after its tire burst and then "plunged headlong" into the side of a bridge on Saturday, according to the state-run Myanmar language newspaper Myanma Ahlin.

A key U.S. senator on Tuesday backed an end to U.S. sanctions on Myanmar after a landmark visit by the country's reformist leader, signaling a new normalization in relations despite rights concerns.

President Thein Sein, a general-turned-civilian who ended Myanmar's long isolation from the West, met lawmakers at the U.S. Capitol one day after the first White House summit by a leader of his country in nearly 50 years.