Hundreds of Tibetan demonstrators, including dozens of Buddhist monks, attacked a police station in western China, state media said, as authorities struggled to keep a lid on protests around the 50th anniversary of a failed Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule.
Six people were arrested and 89 others "surrendered" to police after the incident in Qinghai province on the eastern edge of the Tibetan plateau, according to a report by the official Xinhua news agency. All but two of the 95 were monks.
Security forces have blanketed ethnic Tibetan areas in western China in recent weeks, as authorities have sought to prevent a reprise of the antigovernment unrest that shook communities in the area a year ago after deadly rioting in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa.
An ethnic Tibetan resident of Lajia, the town where Saturday's protests took place, said in a telephone interview he saw "at least 100" Tibetans, including monks, throwing stones at the police station and smashing the windows of police cars parked outside.
The man said police remained barricaded in the station. The crowd dispersed when forces of the paramilitary People's Armed Police arrived on the scene Saturday in the evening. Armed police have been patrolling the town, in Qinghai's Golog prefecture, since then, the man and other residents said.
An official with the township government, who declined to give his name, said: "We have arrested some people. Order has been restored here, and the specific causes are under investigation." Local police declined to comment. Some government officials were slightly injured, Xinhua said.
The Xinhua report quoted police as saying the unrest was the result of rumors about the fate of a man accused of advocating Tibetan independence, who escaped from police custody on Friday. The man remains missing, Xinhua said.
Some protesters believed the man, who they said was a monk, had jumped in a river and drowned, the resident who witnessed the attack on the police station said.
Earlier this month, in an address commemorating the 1959 uprising, the Dalai Lama, Tibetan Buddhists' spiritual leader, said the Communist government had brought "untold suffering and destruction" to Tibet and turned the Himalayan region into "hell on earth."
Beijing has responded with its own public-relations campaign, cataloging development gains, infrastructure improvements and other benefits it has brought Tibetan regions. It declared March 28 "Serfs Emancipation Day" -- marking what it says was the end of traditional serfdom in Tibet under Communist rule.
Separately, a soldier on guard duty at a military base in downtown Chongqing, a southwestern Chinese city, was killed in what police there are calling a terrorist attack, state media said. The 18-year-old sentry was shot last week by an unknown assailant or assailants who ran off with his machine gun. Such attacks on members of the military are extremely rare in China.
