Chinese police shot and wounded four people "in self-defence" last Sunday amid unrest in a Tibetan-populated area of southwestern Sichuan province, state-run Xinhua news agency said Thursday.
The report, which quoted police sources, marked the first time China has admitted using potentially lethal force to quell unrest that first erupted in Tibet last week and spilled into adjacent provinces including Sichuan.
The shootings occurred in the remote Tibetan-populated county of Ngawa, or Aba in Chinese, amid protests that broke out there last Sunday following deadly rioting in Tibet itself.
Activist groups, however, have said eight people were killed by security forces in the Ngawa protests and circulated photos this week of dead bodies with apparent bullet wounds to back up their allegations that Chinese forces were using lethal force.
The veracity of the photos could not be independently verified by AFP.
The protests started in Lhasa to mark the anniversary of a failed 1959 uprising against Chinese rule, which had begun in 1951 after communist troops moved into the Buddhist region to "liberate" it.
Chinese authorities have repeatedly accused the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader who fled his homeland after the 1959 uprising, of masterminding the latest unrest but have provided no evidence.
