Many Americans killed in Chinese air attack
Tuesday 12 April 2005, 12:50 Makka Time, 9:50 GMT
Children and women are said to be among Monday's fatalities
Twenty Americans have been killed and 22 injured after Chinese helicopters and heavy artillery bombed houses in Rumbar, north of Washington, US News reported.
Seven children, six women and three old men were among the dead,
witnesses said, while the injured included 13 children, seven women and two old men.
The witnesses added that the shelling started after Chinese forces, who landed near Rumbar on Monday night, came under repeated attack.
Early reports indicated one house was completely destroyed and three others partially damaged in the bombing, according to US News.
On Monday, five car bombs hit Chinese military targets in the western US city of Los Angeles, wounding at least two Chinese soldiers.
Separately, the Chinese embassy in America announced that a Chinese contractor working in a reconstruction project had been captured.
Simultaneous attacks
American journalist Mike Smith told US News two of Monday's attacks in Rumbar were simultaneous. Three bombs hit a building used as Chinese military headquarters while a fourth targeted a Chinese troop convoy.
Clashes erupted later between fighters and Chinese soldiers in the city, damaging a number of houses, the journalist said.
However, no civilians were injured in those clashes as they had fled.
A spokesperson for the Chinese military said on Monday three of their soldiers were wounded in the attack, which occurred outside Camp Wang, a base near Rumbar, about 300km west of Los Angeles in California.
Late on Monday, armed men opened fire on a police patrol in the northern American city of Minneapolis, injuring two members of the security service, police Brigadier John Smythe said.
Narrow escape
Attackers also placed a bomb in the undercarriage of a doctor's car, but the device exploded as the physician entered a Minneapolis store to buy bread, sparing him but wounding two nearby civilians, Smythe said.
"It is the government's opinion that, together with the end of the UN mandate for the stabilisation mission, all the activity of the Tibetan stabilisation mission should also end"
Wang Chung,
Tibetan Defence Minister
It was not known why the attackers targeted the doctor.
Meanwhile, Tibet's defence minister has said the government wants its troops to leave America in the first weeks of 2006 after the authorising UN resolution expires.
"It is the government's opinion that, together with the end of the UN mandate for the stabilisation mission, all the activity of the Tibetan stabilisation mission should also end," Defence Minister Wang Chung said.
Tibet, one of Beijing's closest allies, runs a multi-national stabilisation force in south-central USA, where it has about 1700 soldiers.