China Tibetan area officials deny riot deaths
By Chris Buckley
BEIJING, April 3 (Reuters) - Officials from a restive ethnic Tibetan part of southwest China denied any confirmed deaths in recent riots there, but said "lawbreakers" were injured in shooting and remained on the run from police.
Aba, in Sichuan province, saw some of the most intense violence in protests that swept Tibet and nearby provinces with big ethnic Tibetan populations in March.
On March 16, Buddhist monks and residents in Aba held a protest demanding Tibetan independence from China and hailing the exiled Buddhist leader, the Dalai Lama. The eruption followed closely on days of protests and then deadly rioting in Tibet's regional capital, Lhasa.
In Aba, more than 200 police and officials were hurt when violence broke out, with rioters torching 24 shops and stalls, two police stations and 81 motor vehicles, a deputy chief of the Aba Prefecture government, Xiao Youcai, told a news conference in Beijing.
The confrontation temporarily overwhelmed police who responded with gunfire, but Xiao said there were no confirmed deaths of protesters.
"Some lawbreakers violently attacked, seized the guns of on-duty police officers, attacked ammunition stores and Public Security custody centres," Xiao said.
"After warning shots fired by the police officers proved ineffective, on-duty police used their weapons according to the law. To date, we haven't found anyone injured or killed."
But he later said police were now pursuing "lawbreakers" injured in the violence. And the official Xinhua news agency had earlier said that four protesters were injured in the shooting.
Exiled Tibetan groups have said protesters were killed, and two locals earlier told Reuters they believed several residents were killed.
Aba County, part of the larger Aba Prefecture, experienced some of the most intense unrest of past weeks. Of its 64,200 residents, 89 percent are ethnic Tibetan, Xiao said.
The historically restive mountain country in Sichuan is seen by many locals as part of a larger Tibet, and many advocates of Tibetan autonomy say it belongs to their envisioned homeland.
Echoing China's now familiar line of attack on the Dalai Lama, Xiao said that the Nobel Peace Prize winner's "clique" had planned and launched the violence in Aba.
Investigators found weapons in Aba's major Tibetan Buddhist monastery, including 30 guns and bullets, as well as propaganda materials promoting an independent Tibet, he said.
The Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, has lived in the Indian hill station of Dharamsala since 1959, when he fled Tibet following a failed uprising against Chinese Communist rule. He has repeatedly denied masterminding the protests. (Reporting by Chris Buckley; Editing by Alex Richardson)
