Paramilitary police opened fire on hundreds of monks, nuns and Tibetans who tried to march on a local government office in western China yesterday to demand the return of the Dalai Lama.

Residents of Luhuo said that a monk and a farmer appeared to have been killed and about a dozen people wounded in the latest violence in Tibetan areas of China. Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency, said that one officer was killed when police confronted a “lawless mob” in Luhuo.

The demonstration began at 4pm when about 200 nuns from Woge nunnery and a similar number of monks from Jueri monastery marched towards the Luhuo Third District government office. They were joined by several hundred farmers and nomads, witnesses said.

Shouting “Long Live the Dalai Lama” and “Tibet belongs to Tibetans”, they approached the office. The paramilitary People’s Armed Police appeared and ordered the crowd to turn back. Witnesses said that shots were fired and two people appeared to have died. They identified one as Congun Dengzhu, a farmer, and the second as an unknown monk.

Security was already tight in Luhuo county, as in other Tibetan communities in China. The turmoil began with a riot in Lhasa on March 15, in which Chinese officials say 19 people were killed when Tibetans rampaged through the Tibetan capital, stabbing ethnic Han Chinese and setting fire to Chinese shops and offices.

The latest demonstration, in a remote corner of a province that abuts Tibet and has a mainly Tibetan population, came after the authorities in Lhasa issued their Number Eight list of those most wanted in connection with the violence.

The new list, issued by the Tibetan Autonomous Region Public Security Bureau rather than by Lhasa city authorities, of eight people brought the number of those now being sought to 53. State-run television has been showing grainy photographs of those who are wanted, which have been taken from video footage and photographs that were taken during the riot on March 15.

The man whose picture appeared as number 52 on the list features in one of the most well-known images from that day of violence, in which a group of Tibetans can be seen setting light to a Chinese flag while a young man in Tibetan dress and carrying a machete-type knife stands in the background.

China says it has acted with restraint in response to the unrest. It said that its paramilitary had opened fire on protesters in Aba, a nearby district of Sichuan province, last week, wounding four people. Tibetans have said that several people were killed.

A police spokeswoman said that five people had been detained in Lhasa in relation to arson during the riot. She said that three Tibetan women in their twenties faced arson charges and had confessed. An investigation was still under way in the two other cases. Officials said last week that 24 people had been arrested and more than 150 had given themselves up.

At least 245 Tibetans were detained in Nepal yesterday after police used bamboo batons to break up a crowd of 500 demonstrators at a pro-Tibet rally near a United Nations office in Kathmandu, police said. Nepal recognises officially the One China policy that says Tibet and Taiwan are indivisible parts of the country.

The government-in-exile of the Dalai Lama in India said yesterday that the death toll in the clashes had risen to 130 but it gave no breakdown or details of the casualties.

Foreign journalists have been barred from approaching any Tibetan areas where unrest has been reported and the numbers are extremely difficult to verify.

Security is tight across Tibetan areas of China. Civil servants in many districts have been ordered to report to their offices every day and to take part in “patriotic education”.

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