Eight people were killed in unrest at a monastery in southwestern China, the International Campaign for Tibet said, after a skirmish with police in which state media said one official was seriously wounded.
Armed police fired on a crowd of locals and monks after some monks at the Tongkor monastery in Donggu township, an ethnically Tibetan area of western Sichuan province, were detained by police following a search for images of the Dalai Lama, the organisation said on its website ( www.savetibet.org).
The monastery in Ganzi (Garze) Prefecture is home to 350 monks, according to its website (
www.donggusi.com).
Phone calls to the monastery and local government bureaux were not answered.
China's state-run Xinhua news agency said that "an official was attacked and seriously wounded in a riot", adding that "local officials exercised restraint" but did not give more details on the incident.
"Police were forced to fire warning shots and put down the violence, since local officials and people were in great danger," Xinhua said in its English-language report, which was also carried in the China Daily today.
Chinese language media did not carry news of the incident.