DHARAMSHALA, India - Tibet’s government-in-exile said 19 Tibetan protesters were shot dead in China’s Gansu province on Tuesday, and said the “confirmed” death toll from a week of unrest had reached 99.“This took place outside of Lhasa. Nineteen people were killed in Machu (county) in Gansu province,” said Thubten Samphel, a spokesman for the exiled administration. “There was a protest in Machu this morning, and police fired on them.”
In all, he said “80 people have been confirmed killed in Lhasa in the past several days and 19 killed today.”
Contacted by AFP in Beijing, a staff official at the Machu county hospital said riots in the county seat had erupted Sunday, with shops of ethnic Han and Hui being ransacked and destroyed, similar to what happened in Lhasa on Friday. “I heard they (the Tibetans) were still causing chaos in the townships, but no longer in the county seat,” the hospital official said. The official said he was unaware of any fatalities stemming from the riot in Machu county seat on Sunday.