A man smashes the glass door of a shop in Lhasa, Tibet, in this frame grab from China's state television CCTV March 14, 2008. Tibet's top government official Qiangba Pingcuo denied on Saturday that the regional capital Lhasa was under martial law. Independence protesters burned shops and cars in the Tibetan capital on Friday in the fiercest unrest in the region for two decades. Video dated March 14, 2008. REUTERS/CCTV via REUTERS TV

Reuters

BEIJING - China said at least 10 people burnt to death in riots in the Tibetan capital Lhasa, the fiercest pro-independence protests to have rocked the region in two decades, scarring China's image months before the Olympics.

Xinhua news agency said the 10 died in the bitter clashes that erupted in the remote, mountain capital on Friday, having initially said seven. It said no foreigners died but gave few other details.

"The victims are all innocent civilians and they have been burnt to death," an official with the regional government was quoted as saying.

It also said armed police in Lhasa rescued more than 580 people, including three Japanese tourists, from banks, supermarkets, schools and hospitals that were set alight.

More than 160 fires, including 40 major blazes, were reported, it said.

China has accused followers of Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, of masterminding the uprising, which has scarred its image of national harmony in the build-up to the Beijing Olympics and already sparked talk of a boycott.

Tibetan crowds in the remote mountain city attacked government offices, burnt vehicles and shops and threw stones at police on Friday in bloody confrontations that left many injured.

At least one policeman was killed and left lying on the street, a Western envoy said, quoting a foreign witness. Armored vehicles were rolled out, the diplomat added.

Residents of Lhasa waited anxiously in homes and closed shops on Saturday morning, wondering if the day would bring fresh confrontation.

"It's quite tense still," said one hostel manager who requested anonymity, as did other residents spoken to.

"We don't dare go outside, so I can't tell you what's happening," said another.

Xinhua said its reporters in Lhasa on Friday saw many rioters "carrying backpacks filled with stones and bottles of inflammable liquids, some holding iron bars, wooden sticks and long knives, a sign that the crowd came fully prepared and meant harm".

A Tibetan resident of the old part of Lhasa which saw big protests on Friday said it was too soon to know whether the new day would bring fresh confrontation.

"If there is blood today it will be ours," he said.

China has said the Dalai Lama engineered what were the biggest protests in the predominantly Buddhist Himalayan region since 1989, a claim he quickly denied.

"It was organized and premeditated splittist and sabotage activity," Kang Jinzhong, political commissar of the paramilitary People's Armed Police in Tibet, told reporters.

Asked to comment on reports of monks attempting suicide and security forces shooting protesters, Kang said: "Nothing of this sort happened. It's all rumors."

While it was uncertain whether the clashes would flare again over the weekend, Beijing has already made clear it saw no reason to change its policies in Tibet, where many locals resent the presence of the Han Chinese, China's biggest ethnic group.

"We are fully capable of maintaining the social stability of Tibet," Xinhua quoted an official as saying in a statement repeated across Chinese state media on Saturday.

"The plots by the very few people against the stability and harmony of Tibet run counter to the will of the people and are doomed to fail."

China may not respond as harshly as it did to the 1989 protests in Tibet, when now President Hu Jintao was Communist Party boss of the region, but nor will it show any softness, said Drew Thompson, a China expert at The Nixon Center in Washington.

"They allow protests to continue only when they're marshalling forces to put them down," he said.

Already the eruption of popular anger at China's presence in Tibet has become an international issue likely to trouble Beijing's preparations for the Olympics in August.

The Games should be boycotted if Beijing mishandles the protests in Tibet, Hollywood actor and Tibetan activist Richard Gere said.

The bitter violence on Friday came after peaceful marches by Buddhist monks in recent days were put down by police. The United States, European Union and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights urged China to show restraint.