CHINA confirmed yesterday that its border guards had shot dead a refugee, believed to be a nun, trying to cross the border from Tibet into Nepal, but said the soldiers acted in self defence.

Such an official confirmation is rare. The government in the restive region of Tibet may have felt forced to respond after dozens of foreign mountaineers, including two Britons, described watching from their Himalayan base camp as Chinese border guards opened fire on the group of fleeing Tibetans on September 30.

Accounts of the incident by rights groups drew a protest yesterday from the US Government. Clark Randt, the US Ambassador to China, went to the Foreign Ministry to protest at China’s treatment of the refugees, said Susan Stevenson, an embassy spokeswoman.

The official Xinhua news agency described a clash that took place on September 30 on the border between China and Nepal. It did not say whether those in the group of nearly 70 people were Tibetans or if they were armed. China’s account differed markedly from descriptions of the incident by foreign climbers.

Xinhua said: “A small squad of Chinese frontier soldiers found the stowaways and tried to persuade them to go back to their home. But the stowaways refused and attacked the soldiers.”

The border guards were then forced to defend themselves and opened fire, injuring two of the group, it said. The official account said one person died later in hospital of complications from a shortage of oxygen while the other was receiving treatment.

It did not clarify why armed border guards, who are often equipped with semi-automatic rifles, would need to shoot to defend themselves in a country where firearms are banned among civilians.

The International Campaign for Tibet said the victim was a nun in her mid-twenties from central Tibet who was among a group of 73 refugees fleeing via Nepal to India.

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