Hundreds of Tibetans who rioted in the streets of Lhasa, attacking Han Chinese with knives and rocks and burning shops and homes, must surrender to the Chinese military by midnight tonight (4pm today) or face severe punishment.

Thousands of People’s Liberation Army troops patrolled Lhasa yesterday to restore order in a city where furious Tibetans turned against ethnic Han Chinese and Hui Muslims over the weekend. Young Tibetans stabbed Hans, threw rocks and set fire to Han-owned shops. The violence was spreading quickly to provinces where many Tibetans live.

Casualty figures were confused. Beijing reported that ten people burnt to death in Lhasa and 12 police were seriously wounded. The Dalai Lama, denouncing what he called cultural genocide against Tibetans, said he did not know how many were dead but the toll could reach 80 or 100.

The unrest is the most serious to hit the deeply Buddhist Himalayan region in nearly 20 years. Its rapid spread to other towns on the Roof of the World, where most of the population are ethnic Tibetans, compounds China’s embarrassment just as it is eager to present an image of a stable, united and prosperous nation five months before the Olympics.

About 200 protesters threw petrol bombs yesterday and burnt down a police station, a market and houses in Aba county in southwestern Sichuan province. “They have gone crazy,” one policeman said as the main government building came under siege. Several paramilitary policemen were wounded as protesters hurled rocks. Some reports said that at least three people had been killed and possibly up to seven.

As the Chinese crackdown gathered pace, a Tibetan teacher, Zhuolei Dawa, known for leading a campaign to burn traditional fur robes after the Dalai Lama encouraged environmental awareness in 2006, was taken from his Aba home by police before dawn.

A day earlier hundreds of monks from sprawling Labrang monastery, shouting and punching the air, marched through the town of Xiahe in northwestern Gansu province. Police fired teargas to disperse protesters brandishing the Tibetan national flag showing snow lions.

In the provincial capital, Lanzhou, about 500 students at the city’s Northwest Minorities University began a sit-in on Sunday afternoon at a sports hall. Similar unrest erupted in Gonghe country in Qinghai province and in Luhuo in Sichuan, witnesses said.

In Tibet’s second city, Xigatse, shops and other businesses were ordered to close amid fears that monks at the base of the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, the Panchen Lama, planned to protest. Monks also tried to demonstrate at Samye monastery on the Brahmaputra river.

Armoured personnel carriers patrolled Lhasa alongside military trucks broadcasting calls to rioters to surrender before a deadline of midnight tonight and gain possible clemency or face the consequences. The city government declared a “people’s war” against what it described as a small number of secessionists manipulated by the Dalai Lama.

The Nobel Peace laureate, speaking from his home in exile in the northern Indian town of Dharamsala, said he believed that China should still host the Olympics in August, but he called for international observers to visit the homeland he fled during a failed uprising in March 1959. He condemned a rule of terror in Tibet.

In an address punctuated with his characteristic gentle laugh, Tibet’s exiled god-king said: “Whether the Chinese Government admits it or not, there is a problem. Whether intentionally or unintentionally, some cultural genocide is taking place. There is some kind of discrimination: the Tibetans in their own land quite often are treated as second-class citizens.”

Tibetan residents of Lhasa said yesterday they were terrified to go outdoors in case they were arrested by police and military patrols mopping up rioters before tonight’s deadline.

Soldiers armed with AK47 rifles were patrolling the narrow streets of the Old City around the ancient Jokhang temple, the holiest shrine in Tibet. Rumours swirled that Hui Muslims, prosperous traders in the city and the targets of Tibetan attacks, might try to burn the Jokhang in retaliation. But the city centre was quiet. Additional troops have reportedly been moved into Tibet from the nearby Chengdu military region.

The regional leader, the Communist Party secretary Zhang Qingli, flew back to Lhasa on Saturday morning from a session in Beijing of China’s parliament and presided over meetings attended by police and army officials. He also visited the Karma Lunsang district, a warren of old Tibetan homes in the east of the city surrounded by the military amid suspicions that many rioters may be holed up inside.

Monks from Lhasa’s main monasteries first took to the streets last Monday to mark the anniversary of the 1959 uprising when the Dalai Lama fled to Tibet. Young Tibetans turned to violence on Friday. Tibetan analysts said their lack of education and inability to speak Chinese made it difficult for them to get jobs.

One said: “They have seen Chinese pouring into Tibet since July 2006. These are people who feel increasingly marginalised in their own homeland.”

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