An urgent investigation is to be conducted by the Nepal and China offices of The United Nations High Commission for Refugees after the head of the UN sponsored Tibet Refugee Centre in Katmandu, Loudhup Dorjee, validated early reports which emerged on Tuesday.

Mr Dorjee reported that a caravan of seventy Tibetans, including women and children, were shot upon at the Nangpa la pass on the Tibet Nepal border and that forty were able to escape into Nepal.

He said: "We don’t know what happened to those who didn't manage to escape."

Matt Whitticase of Free Tibet Campaign said: "It is now vital that UN agencies and the wider international community both take immediate steps to ensure the safety of Tibetan refugees fleeing into Nepal and launch an independent and transparent investigation into the killings."

Neither Chinese nor Nepali officials were available for comment on the reported shootings, which allegedly took place on September 30 at the 19,000ft pass just west of Mount Everest.

Every year, hundreds of Tibetan refugees trek for days through the mountains to escape Chinese rule in Tibet, braving high altitudes, fierce weather and Chinese border troops.

While refugees have been shot at along the border in the past, Mr Dorjee said this was the first time in recent years that troops had killed any.

He said he had been in touch with the group of refugees involved in the latest incident, and that they had crossed into a remote part of Nepal and were still about a week away from reaching Katmandu.

Tens of thousands of Tibetans have fled Tibet since a failed 1959 uprising against Chinese forces, which occupied the Himalayan region eight years earlier.

Among them is the Dalai Lama, the Tibetans’ spiritual leader and 1989 Nobel Peace Prize winner, who lives in the northern Indian town of Dharamsala, where his Government-in-exile is based.

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