Nepal halts Tibetan march to China office, 600 held

A Tibetan woman resists being arrested by the police while marching towards the Chinese Embassy Visa Section in Kathmandu, June 19, 2008, during a protest against China's treatment of Tibetans in Tibet.

KATHMANDU (Reuters) - Hundreds of Tibetan exiles, including nuns and monks, shouted anti-China slogans and scuffled with police in Kathmandu on Thursday before being hauled into waiting trucks and taken to detention centers, police said.

Nearly 600 protesters were detained for trying to storm a visa office of the Chinese embassy, but it was not clear if they had been charged.

Tibetan exiles in Nepal, numbering about 20,000, have protested almost every day in Kathmandu since China cracked down to quell an unrest in Tibet in March.

Shouting "Long Live the Dalai Lama" and "Down with Hu Jintao" the protesters on Wednesday briefly clashed with police in blue camouflage.

"We want free Tibet," they shouted as they were driven to detention centers.

Some exiles, including women, were seen weeping as the police dragged them into trucks.

Nepal considers Tibet part of China, a key aid donor, and does not allow anti-China protests by Tibetans who fled their homeland after the failed 1959 uprising against Chinese rule.

In India, police arrested 30 Tibetans on Thursday in the Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh as they marched towards the Chinese border. They will appear before a magistrate on Friday, police said.

(Reporting by Gopal Sharma; Additional reporting by Abhishek Madhukar in Dharamsala; Editing by Krittivas Mukherjee and Jonathan Allen)