Tibet exile government says 80 killed in protests

DHARAMSALA, India (Reuters) - Eighty people have been killed in the recent clashes between Chinese authorities and Tibetan protesters, the Tibetan government-in-exile said on Sunday.

"Confirmed, regarding number of bodies, is 80," Thubten Samphel, a spokesman for the self-proclaimed government-in-exile, told reporters from a temple in northern India.

Samphel added that another 72 people had been injured.

Another official, Tenzin Taklha, gave details on where the deaths had taken place, including 26 outside the Drapchi prison in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa, but said he had no specifics on the circumstances of the deaths.

On the ethnic background of the dead, he told reporters: "Clearly the majority will be Tibetans."

China has said at least 10 "innocent civilians" died, mostly in fires lit by rioters in Lhasa on Friday, when many buildings were burned and protesters threw rocks at security forces and in some cases attacked Han Chinese, the country's largest ethnic group.

The official Xinhua news agency has reported that 12 policemen were also seriously injured.

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen; Writing by Jerry Norton; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)