A policeman shot dead in a rare gun battle in a Chinese village this week was killed by outraged Tibetans after he opened fire on a young monk, local sources said.

The story emerging from the remote village of Shanghongke in the northwestern Qinghai province contradicts the official report issued by state media, which claimed that the police officer, Lama Cedain, had died in a hail of bullets as he tried to arrest an insurgent leader.

The officer arrived at the village on Monday morning to arrest a 21-year-old monk, identified by Tibetan sources as Quduo, and shot him. It was not clear if the monk had been resisting arrest.

The monk was wanted by the authorities after he took part in a demonstration in the nearby town of Dari on March 21.

He had climbed on to the local government offices, pulled down the Chinese flag flying above the building and set fire to it in protest against Chinese rule and support for Tibetan independence.

After the monk was killed, angry villagers in Shanghongke turned on the police officer, the sources said. They fetched guns, commonly used in the area for hunting and also in provincial border disputes among Tibetans vying to collect caterpillar fungus for traditional herbal medicines, and shot the police officer. State media said that Lama Cedain, who was also ethnic Tibetan, was shot six times.

The young monk’s father, identified as Sangsang Lailai, was arrested in the police raid, the Tibetan sources said. It was not clear if anyone else was wounded in the gunbattle or how many other people may have been detained.

The official Xinhua news agency said that Lama Cedain was leading a raid to capture a ringleader of the March 21 demonstration when he was shot dead. Other police then killed his assailant, who has yet to be identified.

Such gunfights are extremely rare in China, where very few people own guns and where violence against the police is unusual.

Chinese regions inhabited by ethnic Tibetans have been off limits to foreign journalists since a riot in the region’s capital, Lhasa, on March 14, thus making it difficult to verify such differing accounts of events.

Police have arrested hundreds of people in Lhasa since the riots in which at least 18 people were killed as Tibetans rampaged through the streets, attacking ethnic Han Chinese and burning hundreds of shops and offices.

The unrest spread swiftly into neighbouring provinces with large Tibetan populations and footage has even emerged of Tibetans on horseback riding into one town where they pulled down the Chinese flag flying above the local school.

That Tibetans would take the drastic step of opening fire on a police officer highlights the difficulty China faces in restoring order in this restive region where many people still feel a deeper loyalty to the exiled Dalai Lama than to their Government in Beijing.

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