State-controlled Xinhua news agency reported four people were shot and wounded last weekend by police in a Tibetan area of southwestern China, as the Dalai Lama expressed fears the crackdown on unrest had caused many casualties.

Long military convoys were on the move in Tibet while troops also poured into nearby provinces after a week of violence directed against China's rule of the Himalayan region, witnesses, activist groups and media reports said.

"We saw a big convoy of military vehicles with troops in the back," German journalist Georg Blume said from the Tibetan capital Lhasa early Thursday.

"One convoy was about two kilometres (1.2 miles) long and contained about 200 trucks. Each had 30 soldiers on board so that's about 6,000 military personnel in one convoy."

Blume, who works for the German newspaper Die Zeit, and another witness in Lhasa said they had seen security forces going from one house to the next.

A week of protests against China's 57-year rule of Tibet erupted into rioting in Lhasa last Friday. Demonstrations have since spilled over into nearby Chinese provinces with sizeable ethnic Tibetan populations.

China said rioters killed 13 innocent civilians in Lhasa while denying that it used deadly force to end the protests. Exiled Tibetan leaders have said about 100 people were believed to have been killed in the Chinese crackdown.

The Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader who fled his homeland after a failed uprising against Chinese rule in 1959, on Thursday expressed concerns for the many people he said had fallen victim to the Chinese security forces.

"We don't know exact numbers. Some say six, some say 100, but places have been cut off. There are movements of Chinese troops. I am really worried a lot of casualties have happened," he said from his base of exile in northern India.

Xinhua said security forces had shot and wounded four protesters "in self-defence" during protests in the remote Tibetan-populated county of Ngawa in Sichuan last Sunday.

Activist groups, however, have said at least eight people were killed by security forces in the Ngawa protests.

They circulated photos this week of dead bodies with apparent bullet wounds to back up their allegations that Chinese forces were using lethal force despite official claims to the contrary.

The unrest has been a public relations challenge for China in the lead-up to the Beijing Olympics in August, an event the nation's communist rulers had hoped would showcase a harmonious country.

While no government has called for a boycott of the Games, China has faced increasing international pressure to resolve the unrest peacefully and to hold talks with the Dalai Lama.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Thursday told reporters she hoped "that China would exercise restraint but it is also important that all parties refrain from violence."

Rice recalled that in her phone conversation Wednesday night with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi she pressed the Chinese government to open a dialogue with Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.

However China all but ruled out talks, with foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang referring to the Dalai Lama as a double-dealing "splittist" bent on Tibetan independence.

The Dalai Lama has repeatedly said that he does not want independence for his homeland, but instead seeks greater cultural autonomy under Chinese rule and an end to what he describes as widespread repression.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said on Wednesday he planned to meet with the Dalai Lama, triggering a swift response from Beijing.

"We have expressed our great concern over that," Qin told reporters.

White House spokesman Dana Perino indicated Thursday President George W. Bush's plans to attend the Beijing Olympics would not be influenced by Tibet.

"The president's position about the Olympics has been that this is not a political event but a chance for athletes to compete at the top of their class," Perino said when asked about a possible re-think.

China has banned foreign journalists from Lhasa and tried to block them from riot-hit nearby western provinces of China.

Nevertheless, reports of a troop build-up emerged.

More than 400 vehicles were seen heading to Tibet through mountain passes in western China, a BBC reporter said, without specifying his location because of Chinese restrictions on foreign press reporting in the area.

"Over the past two days I've seen increasing numbers of troops heading for the Tibetan border but this is the largest deployment by far," the reporter said.

Large troop movements also took place in Sichuan province, which borders Tibet and has several mainly Tibetan areas, one foreign reporter there told AFP.

Authorities have arrested 24 people linked to the protests in Lhasa, while 170 people have surrendered to police, Xinhua reported.

Activist groups say hundreds of Tibetans have been arrested.

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