China insists used massive restraint on Tibet riots

By Chris Buckley and Lindsay Beck

BEIJING (Reuters) - China said on Monday it had shown massive restraint in the face of violent protests by Tibetans, which it said were orchestrated by followers of the Dalai Lama to wreck the Beijing Olympics in August.

But even as the governor of Tibet told reporters in Beijing that no lethal weapons had been used against protesters in the capital, Lhasa, troops poured into neighboring provinces to quell copycat protests and riots that erupted over the weekend.

A resident in Sichuan's Aba prefecture said fresh protests flared in two Tibetan schools on Monday, with hundreds of students from each facing off against police and troops.

The resident, who declined to be identified, said 18 people, including Buddhist monks and students, were killed when troops opened fire with guns on Sunday. Earlier a policeman was burnt to death.

His account could not be immediately verified.

Exiled representatives of Tibet in Dharamsala, India, on Sunday put the death toll from last week's protests in Lhasa at 80.

But Qiangba Puncog, the government chief of the Himalayan region, said that only 13 "innocent civilians" had been killed and dozens of security personnel injured in Lhasa when several days of monk-led protests broadened into riots in which houses and shops were burned and looted on Friday.

"I can say with all responsibility we did not use lethal weapons, including opening fire," he said in Beijing, adding that only tear gas and water cannon had been used to deal with the region's worst protests in nearly two decades.

The governor said the unrest was planned and organized by "external and domestic forces" of the "Dalai clique", referring to Tibetan Buddhists' exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.

"This time a tiny handful of separatists and lawless elements engaged in extreme acts with the goal of generating even more publicity to wreck stability during this crucial period of the Olympic Games -- over 18 years of hard-won stability."

Peng Xiaobo, who sells clothes in Lhasa, told state television seven family members were forced to jump from an upper floor when a mob set his ground-floor shop on fire.

His uncle and cousin were burned to death, while his wife suffered serious injuries, CCTV said.

"My cousin only turned 18 in December. She didn't dare jump when the stairs below were burning," Peng said in tears.

The Dalai Lama fled Tibet after a failed uprising against Chinese rule in 1959 and set up a government-in-exile in Dharamsala. Beijing reviles him as a separatist though he says he only wants more autonomy for the region, which Communist troops entered in 1950. The last major rioting in Tibet was in 1989.

MIDNIGHT DEADLINE