Reuters

China release video of Tibetan protesters

A new video taken by Chinese state television has been released showing monks confronting riot police.

Officials have also posted a series of photos of their 'most wanted' suspects.

It is China's first admission its security forces have caused injuries in their crackdown on anti-government demonstrations

Tibetans in China's province of Sichuan said they believed police had killed several people in anti-Chinese riots.

The claim disputes China's official report that no protesters have died since the clashes began.

But Chinese authorities have revealed four protesters were shot and wounded in a heavily ethnic Tibetan part of the province, where protests broke out after riots in neighbouring Tibet a week ago.

The police said they acted in self-defence when they opened fire in the Chinese city of Kangding on Sunday.

It is China's first admission its security forces have caused injuries in their crackdown on anti-government demonstrations.

A new video taken by Chinese state television has been released showing monks confronting riot police and officials have posted a series of photos of their 'most wanted' suspects.

Chinese authorities also said they had arrested dozens of people involved in the protests that have swept Tibet and prompted Beijing to pour in troops to crush further unrest.

Exiled Tibetans say as many as 100 Tibetans have been killed in total, while China says 13 "innocent civilians" died in riots last week in Tibet's capital Lhasa.

Mindful of the international condemnation of its military crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989, China says its security forces in Lhasa exercised "maximum restraint" and did not use lethal weapons.

China has accused the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan Buddhist leader, of orchestrating last week's violence - a charge he has denied.

Speaking in his home in the Indian town of Dharamsala, the Dalai Lama said he was ready to travel to Beijing to meet Chinese leaders, and called on Tibetans to end the violence.

Beijing has long said it will meet him only if he forsakes claims to Tibet's independence. The 72-year-old says he just wants greater autonomy for his homeland.

The Chinese government has resisted international calls for dialogue over the unrest and expressed serious concern that Prime Minister Gordon Brown plans to meet the Dalai Lama during a visit to Britain in May.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has urged China to show restraint towards protesters.

"We have urged for many years that China engage in a dialogue with the Dalai Lama, who represents an authoritative figure who stands against violence and who also stands for the cultural autonomy of the Tibetan people but has made very clear that he does not stand for independence," she added.

And the speaker of the United States House of Representatives has called on the world community on Friday to denounce China in the wake of its crackdown in Tibet.

Nancy Pelosi has called the crisis "a challenge to the conscience of the world."

Mrs Pelosi was the first major foreign official to meet the Dalai Lama since protests turned violent in the Chinese-ruled region.

Addressing a crowd of thousands of Tibetans, she said: "If freedom-loving people throughout the world do not speak out against China's oppression in China and Tibet, we have lost all moral authority to speak on behalf of human rights anywhere in the world."

The unrest has alarmed China, keen to look its best in the run-up to the Olympic Games in Beijing in August.