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BEIJING - MORE than 1,000 Tibetans, some on horseback, charged into a remote Chinese town, attacking a government building and hoisting their national flag, Canadian TV reported.
CTV carried the dramatic footage of the mounted Tibetans, cheering wildly as they galloped into the unnamed town in Gansu province in China's northwest, demanding, the report said, an independent Tibet.
One of the Tibetan horsemen seen charging through the town in a cloud of dust kicked up by the horses' hooves was carrying a large Tibetan flag.
Inside the town a crowd of Tibetans attacked a government building but was repelled by about 100 heavily armed soldiers holed up inside using tear gas, CTV said.
The footage featured loud blasts, apparently the noise of tear gas canisters either being fired or exploding.
It showed a large number of Tibetan men and women fleeing in disarray, some covering their mouths because of the tear gas.
One man bleeding heavily from an injury to his head told CTV's reporter he had been beaten.
CTV also showed footage of a group of people pulling down the Chinese national flag at the town's school, hoisting the old Tibetan flag instead.
A group of people, led by a robed monk, was seen chanting, calling for 'freedom from Chinese rule and for an end to years of what they say is brutal oppression,' the report said.
The CTV reporter said scenes like these were repeated throughout China.
There has been little footage or reporting to emerge from Tibet and Tibetan-populated areas of western China, where authorities have clamped down harshly on foreign reporting, stopping journalists from covering protests against Chinese rule.
The CTV report was put on YouTube. -- AFP
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