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BEIJING : China on Friday reported a fresh outbreak of violence as it sought to contain the biggest challenge to its rule of Tibet in decades, saying police were forced to fire warning shots to quell "rioters."
One local official was seriously wounded during the "riot," which took place in a Tibetan-populated area of Sichuan province in southwest China on Thursday evening, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
Xinhua said security forces showed restraint during the incident but the London-based Free Tibet Campaign, citing a source in the area, said eight Tibetans had been killed when police opened fire.
The protest was the latest in three weeks of deadly unrest pitting Tibetans against Chinese security forces, which has angered and embarrassed China as it prepares for the Beijing Olympics in August.
China has blamed exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama for the protests and accused him of trying to sabotage the Olympics, claims he strenuously denies.
Nevertheless, an envoy of the Dalai Lama, Lodi Gyari, on Thursday urged Beijing to cancel plans to run the Olympic torch relay through Tibet, saying to do so would be "provocative and insulting" given the unrest.
The protests began in Tibet's capital, Lhasa, to mark the anniversary of a failed 1959 uprising against Chinese rule of the remote Himalayan region.
Four days of peaceful protests erupted into rioting in Lhasa on March 14, and the unrest spread to other areas of western China with Tibetan populations, including Sichuan province.
China says Tibetan rioters have killed 18 civilians and two policemen. Before the latest unrest, Tibetan exiled leaders said 135-140 Tibetans had been killed in the Chinese crackdown.
Communist China has ruled Tibet since 1951, after sending in troops to "liberate" the Buddhist region the previous year.
In the latest incident in Garze county of Sichuan, Xinhua said rioters had attacked the local township government office, seriously wounding one official.
"Local officials exercised restraint during the riot and repeatedly told the rioters to abide by the law," Xinhua quoted a local government official as saying.
"(But) police were forced to fire warning shots and put down the violence, since local officials and people were in great danger."
Xinhua did not give other key details in its brief dispatch, such as how many "rioters" were involved or why they had marched on the government office.
But the Free Tibet Campaign, citing its source in the region, said security forces opened fire when 370 monks from the Tongkhor monastery and about 400 other Tibetans staged a protest.
Eight Tibetans were killed after security forces opened fire on the protesters, Free Tibet Campaign spokesman Matt Whitticase said. However, he emphasised he only had the information from one source.
Whitticase said the Tibetans had been protesting over the detention of two monks on Thursday. He said the two monks had been held because they were found with photos of the Dalai Lama.
Tensions had escalated the previous day when authorities came to the Tonkhor monastery to conduct "patriotic re-education," which involved denouncing the Dalai Lama, according to Whitticase.
The monks refused to do so.
Independently verifying what happened, as with the previous three weeks of unrest, is extremely difficult because China has barred foreign reporters from travelling to Tibet and the other hotspot areas.
In his comments to a US Congressional hearing, Gyari said the Olympic torch should not climb to the top of Mount Everest next month and should not travel through Lhasa in June, as is currently scheduled.
"This idea of taking the torch through Tibet, I really think, should be cancelled precisely because that would be very deliberately provocative and very insulting after what has happened," he said.
Gyari said that if the Chinese authorities went ahead with the torch run in Tibet, it would "bring more adverse publicity" to the Olympics in Beijing -- which China wants to be a national showcase of its rising standing.
Zhu Jing, a spokeswoman for the Beijing Olympic organising committee, said Gyari's comments were further proof the "Dalai clique" wants to sabotage the Olympics.
Meanwhile, the Tibet Commerce newspaper said late Thursday that more than 1,000 people had either been caught by police or had turned themselves in for their involvement in the unrest.
Trials of at least some would begin this month, the paper reported, citing the deputy chief of the Lhasa communist party, Wang Xiangming.
- AFP /ls
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