"there are hundreds of people in the street, howling like wolves" (updated)

The best mainstream coverage of the latest Tibetan uprising seems to be coming from the Christian Science Monitor, the only major paper with someone on the ground in Lhasa.

The chronology is roughly that monks from the Sera Monastery staged a demonstration on Tuesday to mark the anniversary of the 1959 Tibetan uprising. In response, the authorities sent in squads of paramilitary police to arrest the protesting monks and seal off the monasteries. And that brought thousands of Tibetans out on to the streets in support of the monks in the largest uprising for twenty years. RFA reports from Nepal that there’s a Sicilian vespers dimension emerging:

The crowd was joined by monks from the Ramoche monastery. It then proceeded to smash or burn any property with real or perceived Chinese connections, including a well-known restaurant, Tashi Delek, whose Tibetan owners are believed to be pro-China.

John Kennedy at Global Voices translates some local blogging, including this from an employee of a state owned travel agency:

Here in Lhasa they're telling us to say that the temples are being renovated

A bit late for that, I think. On the other hand, it’s an ill wind…

Lhasa is rioting…school was closed…made some birthday soup…fighting in the city is brutal! Army cars keep going by, hand grenades keep getting thrown around, the area all around Jokhang is being blasted, pedestrian streets have been closed by the PAP, Wenzhou Trade St. has been closed too, it seems the gas stations have been blown up…old as I am I've never seen anything like this…the Dalai is really fucking something! I hope he hurries and blows our campus up too! I'll transfer to Renmin U!

Update: Protests spread to Gansu.

Around 50 monks from the Labrang Tashikyil Monastery staged a demonstration carrying the banned Tibetan national flag and called for "Tibetan Independence" around 2 p.m. (Beijing Time) today afternoon. Around 500 monks from the same monastery later joined the demonstration. The demonstration eventually grew into thousands when laypeople also joined in. The police started to fire live ammunitions in the air and started to beat when the demonstrators neared the Sangchu County Public Security Bureau headquarters.