BEIJING, March 16: The authorities in Lhasa, the capital of China’s Tibet region, on Sunday warned rioters to hand themselves over to police by Monday midnight and gain possible clemency, or face harsh punishment.

The warning came after rioting erupted in a province neighbouring Tibet, two days after violent protests by the Tibetans.

“They’ve gone crazy,” said a police officer in Aba county in Sichuan, one of four provinces with large Tibetan populations, her voice trembling down the telephone.

The officer, who declined to be named, said a crowd of Tibetans hurled petrol bombs, burning down a police station and a market in the county’s main town, and set fire to two police cars and a fire truck.

Security forces fired tear gas and arrested five people.

The official Xinhua news agency said that only 10 “innocent civilians” had died, mostly in fires lit by rioters, and that 12 policemen had been seriously injured.

Supporters of the Dalai Lama claimed 80 people had been killed during the protests in Lhasa and at least another 72 injured. Protests were reported in Sichuan, Qinghai and Gansu provinces. All are home to Tibetan population.

The new disturbances came as the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibet and Nobel peace laureate who fled to India in 1959, called for an investigation into whether cultural genocide — intentional or not — was taking place in his homeland.

Tibetan officials in Lhasa rejected the Dalai Lama’s condemnation of “cultural genocide” in his homeland, Chinese state media reported.

“Should the Dalai separatist group not spoil (the stability in Tibet), Tibet would be in its best period of development in history,” said Lhasa Mayor Doje Cezhug, according to Xinhua news agency.

Meanwhile, anti-riot troops locked down Lhasa — a remote city high in the Himalayas, to prevent a repeat of Friday’s violence. State-run China Central Television said social order had “basically been restored” in Lhasa.

Shops remained closed and residents had loaded 24 trucks with debris, the TV said, showing pictures of people shovelling piles of ash and charred wreckage.

Xinhua said many shops had reopened in Lhasa and cars were back on the streets as calm returned to the city.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in a statement, urged Beijing to “release monks and others who have been detained solely for the peaceful expression of their views”.

International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge said he opposed an Olympic boycott over Tibet.

“We believe that the boycott doesn’t solve anything,” Rogge told reporters on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts. “On the contrary, it is penalising innocent athletes and it is stopping the organisation from something that definitely is worthwhile organising.”

The Dalai Lama, who says he only wants greater autonomy for his people, said China deserved to host the Olympics but the international community had a “moral responsibility” to remind China to be a good host for the Aug 8-24 Games.

Monks first took to the streets of Tibet last Monday to mark the 49th anniversary of a failed uprising, and protests soon spread to adjoining regions inhabited by pockets of Tibetans. Late on Sunday night China suspended foreign travel permits to Tibet out of “safety concerns”, state media said.—Agencies