The New Nation - Internet Edition

Reuters, Beijing

Chinese troops moved to tackle more unrest in ethnic Tibetan enclaves on Monday, as a deadline loomed for "troublemakers" who took part in protests against Chinese rule in Lhasa that some say killed up to 80 people.

Lhasa, capital of the remote, mountainous region, was under tight police watch, but reports and officials said demonstrations by ethnic Tibetans flared in at least two Chinese provinces at the weekend, piling pressure on the Communist authorities.

"We are completely capable of protecting the security of the Tibet people. Right now the overall situation in Tibet is very good," the mayor of Lhasa, Doje Cezhug, said from Beijing, in remarks posted on the Tibet government's Web site. But protests hit ethnic Tibetan areas in the Chinese provinces of Sichuan and Gansu on Sunday, reducing the chances of an early end to the instability that is a major challenge to China's leaders just months before it hosts the Olympic Games.

In the Sichuan region of Aba, two ethnic Tibetans said hundreds of People's Liberation Army vehicles moved in overnight, after unrest in which police said a crowd of Tibetans hurled petrol bombs and set a police station and a market on fire. "They've been driving through all night. It's just tailing off now," the man said, adding that word had spread of protests in other parts of the region as well.

In Gansu's Machu town, a crowd of 300-400 carried pictures of Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, and shouted slogans as they marched on government buildings, breaking windows and doors and setting fire to Chinese shops and businesses, the Free Tibet Campaign said.

The London-based group said 100 Tibetan students staged a sit-in at Northwest Minority University in Gansu's capital, Lanzhou, a worry for a country with a history of student unrest, notably the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 that ended in a bloody military crackdown.