Tibetans clash with police in western China

BEIJING (Reuters) - A dispute over the price of balloons in an ethnically Tibetan town in western China sparked a clash between thousands of residents and police, a source with knowledge of the incident said on Sunday.

Several thousand Tibetans in Tongren, Qinghai province, threw stones and attacked police for over an hour during Lunar New Year celebrations on Thursday night, the source, who declined to be named, told Reuters.

The clash happened after a group of Tibetan youths were involved in a scuffle with a Muslim trader of the Hui ethnic group, the source said.

"Members of the crowd ... tried to intervene, and then beat the policemen, who ran away. Rumours that the police had beat up some local youths spread through the crowd, and many other police were beaten or chased away, leading to large-scale unrest," the source said.

A contingent of People's Armed Police, or paramilitary force, later arrived to restore order, firing tear gas and detaining about 100 people.

Up to 20 of the police, who were all Tibetans, were taken to hospital, and two police cars were overturned during the rioting, the source said.

Authorities released 90 of the detained, and the remaining 10 were freed the following morning, after protesters gathered outside government offices and monks at local monasteries threatened to boycott new year rituals and dance ceremonies scheduled for later that day.

"This suggests the local government also decided the incidents were a reaction to excessive force, not a protest about China's role in Tibet," the source said.

A notice from Tongren county authorities called for calm and said police were holding "people whose mistakes are considered heavy for further investigation".

"The county government asks all nationalities ... voluntarily to protect the security of the county," the statement said.

Calls placed to Tongren government offices seeking comment went unanswered.

Relations between mainly Buddhist Tibetans and the Hui, a Muslim minority numbering about 10 million in China, have long been tense.

Ethnic tensions between Chinese minorities and the dominant Han, who account for about 90 percent of China's 1.3 billion people, regularly spill over into violence, particularly in the country's unsettled western regions.

In November, an altercation between a Han Chinese shopowner and Tibetan monks in rural Tibet's Naqu district led to hundreds of Tibetan herdsmen smashing shops owned by Han Chinese.

(Reporting by Ian Ransom and Benjamin Kang Lim; Editing by Alex Richardson)