SHANGHAI, China: A gun battle between Tibetan groups feuding over access to a lucrative wild fungus has left up to people six dead and more than 110 injured, reports said Tuesday.
About 500 ethnic Tibetans from neighboring townships had converged on Sichuan province’s Dabba county government on Friday demanding that the border between them be clearly demarcated, the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy reported.
The lack of a clear border had led to escalating clashes over accusations of poaching of caterpillar fungus, a precious ingredient in traditional Chinese medicine that is the mainstay of the local economy, the group said.
County officials made no move to intervene, however, and fighting broke out between the two groups on a nearby bridge during which several men from Danba township drew rifles and threw hand grenades, killing six from Sumdo township, the group said.
A female officer who answered the phone at Dabba police headquarters confirmed the clash, but said investigators were still trying to determine the number of casualties.
“I heard that people died but we are not clear about the exact number since the investigation is still going on,” said the woman, who declined to give her name as is common with Chinese police officers.
Calls to county government officers rang unanswered.
The Information Center said local Tibetan leaders were holding the county government partly responsible for the clashes because it failed on repeated occasions to meet calls to settle the border dispute.
Amid rising numbers of civil disturbances, local officials have been ordered by Beijing to step in before such disputes get out of hand — and threatened with dismissal for not doing so.
It wasn’t clear where the weapons had come from, although guerrillas in traditionally Tibetan areas of western Sichuan battled occupying Chinese forces for years in the 1950s.
