Yangon, Sep 18 (DPA) Myanmar authorities Friday released an estimated 600 inmates, including some political prisoners, from Yangon's notorious Insein Prison as part of an amnesty for 7,114 inmates nationwide.

Insein authorities invited journalists to witness the release of a first batch of 359 prisoners at 1.30 p.m. Another 250 were released at 5.30 p.m.

The amnesty will last several days to release 7,114 prisoners nationwide, Director General of Prison Department Zaw Win said.

'About 250 prisoners detained for security reasons would be free out of 7,114 prisoners,' Zaw Win told reporters while insisting that there were no political prisoners in Myanmar's prisons.

Myanmar has an estimated 2,100 political prisoners in its jails, according to Human Rights Watch and other human rights groups. Western democracies have repeatedly demanded that political prisoners be released.

The junta's most famous prisoner is opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, 64, who has spent 14 of the past 20 years under house detention.

A special court set up in Insein Prison last month found Suu Kyi guilty of breaking the terms of her last six-year term of house detention by allowing US national John William Yettaw to swim to her lakeside home-cum-prison in Yangon, albeit as an uninvited guest.

The court initially sentenced Suu Kyi, the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, to three years in prison with hard labour, which was later commuted to 18 months under house arrest.