HTML comments escaped in output

[BenLubar]

For example, <!-- foo --> turns into <!-- foo --> in the output even though other HTML tags are passed through unchanged.

[codecowboy]

How do we do block comments?

I tried:

{*      <span class="post-tools">
            <a component="post/reply" href="#" class="no-select <!-- IF !privileges.topics:reply -->hidden<!-- ENDIF !privileges.topics:reply -->">[[topic:reply]]</a>
            <a component="post/quote" href="#" class="no-select <!-- IF !privileges.topics:reply -->hidden<!-- ENDIF !privileges.topics:reply -->">[[topic:quote]]</a>
        </span>*}

but the curly brace and asterisk are rendered.

[pitaj]

you can use regular old HTML comments now as long as they don't start with IF, BEGIN, or END