A gun battle in a rural area of northwest China this week left a police officer and a Tibetan dead, according to state-run news media.

It was China’s first official admission that security forces have killed any Tibetans in the antigovernment unrest that began in mid-March.

According to the official Xinhua News Agency, the gunfight occurred Monday in Qinghai Province after the police tried to arrest a man who they said had led a group of herders seeking to incite a riot a week after the March 14 disturbances that shook Lhasa, the capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region.

Tibetan exile groups say that more than 200 people, most of them Tibetan, have died in the crackdowns that have racked western China in recent weeks. But so far, the Chinese authorities have acknowledged the deaths of only 19 people, who they describe as victims of Tibetan violence. Most of them were members of the Han Chinese majority, though at least one was Tibetan. The government has encouraged Han Chinese to migrate to Tibetan areas of the country.

There have been official accounts of clashes in which police officers fired on crowds, but without any reports of deaths. On March 16, according to official news accounts, the police shot and wounded protesters in the town of Ngawa, in Sichuan Province. Exile groups later released photographs of six people they said had died in the clash.

On Tuesday, the government announced convictions of 30 Tibetans involved in the rioting in Lhasa, handing out sentences ranging from three years to life in prison for what the authorities said were their roles attacking the police, burning vehicles and looting stores. The authorities have said they will try 52 more people in the coming weeks. An additional 88 people are still being sought, according to Xinhua.

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