China sees 'life or death struggle' in Tibet

---

BEIJING, Mar 19 (AFP): China said Wednesday it was engaged in a "life or death struggle" over Tibet as dramatic footage emerged of Tibetan protesters rampaging on horseback and hoisting their national flag.
With China deploying a massive security force to quash the uprising and sealing off the hotbed areas from foreign media, activists and a rights group warned hundreds of Tibetans believed arrested may be at risk of torture.
Activist groups also released photos Tuesday of eight dead Tibetans they said had been killed by Chinese forces at a protest in Sichuan province, saying it was proof of the brutal methods being used to quell the unrest.
But amid the fierce international scrutiny and its image being tarnished ahead of the Beijing Olympics, China showed no signs of backing down in its controversial campaign to end the uprising against its 57-year rule of Tibet.
"We are currently in an intensely bloody and fiery struggle with the Dalai Lama clique, a life or death struggle with the enemy," Tibet's Communist Party leader Zhang Qingli said in an editorial in the Tibet Daily Wednesday.
"As long as we... remain of one heart, turn the masses into a walled city and work together to attack the enemy, then we can safeguard social stability and achieve a full victory in this intense battle against separatism."
The protests began in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa last week and escalated into deadly incidents Friday.
While blanket security of the city appeared to have stymied any further major protests there, Tibetans living in neighbouring and nearby provinces have continued to defy authorities and protest for independence of their homeland.
China has tried to block foreign reporters from travelling into these regions, but Canadian TV said it was able to witness one of those protests Tuesday in Gansu province, and showed dramatic footage of the unrest.
In the broadcast, more than 1,000 ethnic Tibetans, some of them on horseback, charged into a remote town, attacking a government building, pulling down the Chinese flag at a school and hoisting the Tibetan one.
Inside the town the crowd of Tibetans was repelled by about 100 heavily armed soldiers using tear gas, CTV said.
China has insisted it has used no deadly force to quell the unrest, reporting that the only people who have died so far were 13 "innocent civilians" killed by rioters in Lhasa Friday.
However Tibet's parliament-in-exile said Monday that "hundreds" of people had been killed in the Chinese crackdown.
Activists also pointed to photos said to be of dead Tibetans from a protest Sunday in Ngawa, in southwest China's Sichuan province, as proof that Chinese forces were using lethal force.