‘’They’ve gone crazy,’’ said a police officer in Aba county, Sichuan, one of four provinces with large Tibetan population, her voice trembling down the telephone as the main government building there came under siege.
More violence
The officer, who declined to be named, said a crowd of Tibetans hurled petrol bombs, burning down a police station and a market, and torched two police cars and a fire truck.
Security forces fired tear gas and arrested five people. The Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy said on its web site that at least seven people had been shot dead in the protests.
A police officer, reached by telephone, denied this.
Lock down
Meanwhile, anti-riot troops locked down Lhasa — a remote city high in the Himalayas barred to foreign journalists without permission and now sealed off to tourists - to prevent a repeat of Friday’s violence, the most serious in nearly two decades.
The protests have brought Beijing under the scanner ahead of the Olympics.
