Bomb lobbed at police station in China's west

The incident came just days after the one-year anniversary of anti-government riots March 14 in Lhasa, Tibet's regional capital. Tuesday also marked 50 years after the Dalai Lama's March 17 escape into exile in India after Chinese troops crushed a Tibetan revolt.

The explosion just after midnight Monday shattered windows at the station in Bogexi, a town in the predominantly Tibetan Ganzi prefecture, said Liu Xiaojun, a police official.

The building was not yet occupied and an investigation was under way, said Liu, who works at the public security bureau in Batang county, which oversees the town. Batang, in Sichuan province's far west, is about five miles (seven kilometers) from the Tibetan border.

The state-run China Daily newspaper blamed "terrorists" for the blast, but provided no other details.

Ganzi, a rugged, deeply Buddhist region filled with monasteries and nunneries, is known for its strong Tibetan identity and has been at the center of dissent for years. It saw some of the most violent protests last spring.

The unrest last year in Lhasa was triggered when monks staging a peaceful commemoration of the aborted March 10, 1959, uprising were blockaded by police. It spread to three other provinces in western China — Sichuan, Gansu and Qinghai — and was the most sustained and widespread Tibetan uprising in decades.

China responded by flooding the region with troops, and Tibetan rights groups reported that many monks and nuns were detained or arrested and monasteries were put under tight watch.

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