The United States Embassy in Beijing warned American citizens on Friday not to travel to Lhasa. The embassy said it had "received firsthand reports from American citizens in the city who report gunfire and other indications of violence."

In a meeting in Beijing on Friday, the United States ambassador to China, Clark Randt, urged Chinese officials to act with restraint, "and not resort to use of force in dealing with the protesters," the State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, told reporters.

The Chinese authorities blamed the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader of Tibet, for the violence and said the government would maintain stability in Lhasa. "The government of Tibet Autonomous Region said Friday there had been enough evidence to prove that the recent sabotage was 'organized, premeditated and masterminded' by the Dalai clique," reported Xinhua, the Chinese government's official news agency.

The Dalai Lama released a statement on Friday calling on both sides to avoid violence and appealing to China's leaders to "address the long simmering resentment of the Tibetan people through dialogue with the Tibetan people." A spokesman for the Dalai Lama called China's accusations "absolutely baseless."

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The situation in Lhasa represents a complicated predicament for the Communist Party, which is now holding its annual meeting of the National People's Congress in Beijing. Party leaders are already grappling with growing criticism of China's domestic human rights record and its ties to Sudan, which the United States has accused of waging a genocidal campaign in its Darfur region.

In the past China has not hesitated to crush major protests in Tibet or to jail disobedient monks. President Hu Jintao, who is also the general secretary of the Communist Party, served as party boss in Tibet during a violent crackdown in 1989. His support for the bloody suppression of unrest that year earned him the good will of Deng Xiaoping, then the paramount leader, and led directly to his elevation to the Politburo Standing Committee and eventually to China's top leadership posts.

But Chinese leaders may be more reluctant to order such heavy-handed tactics as Beijing prepares for the Olympics. On Friday, different accounts emerged about how the Chinese military police in Lhasa handled the demonstrations.

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Radio Free Asia, a nonprofit news agency financed by the United States government, quoted Tibetan witnesses who described police officers firing into crowds of protesters and killing at least two people in the city's ancient Barkhor area. On Saturday morning, Radio Free Asia quoted witnesses who described seeing dead bodies around Lhasa.

Later on Saturday Xinhua reported 10 deaths had been confirmed.

A Chinese resident in Lhasa, reached by telephone, said stories were circulating among local Chinese that soldiers had been wounded and had not been allowed to fight back against Tibetans throwing rocks. Another Chinese man living near the Barkhor area said family members had told him that two soldiers died and that Tibetans were beating Chinese residents with iron rods.

Friday's sharp escalation in violence, and the sense of dread described by several residents, came a day after China's Foreign Ministry told reporters that the situation in Lhasa had stabilized. The protest started Monday when Buddhist monks began peaceful protests against religious restrictions by Chinese authorities. The police arrested 50 or 60 monks, but other protests followed Tuesday and Wednesday as monks in two different monasteries took to the streets.

The apparent epicenter of Friday's protests was the Tromsikhang Market, a large, concrete structure built in the Barkhor area by the Chinese authorities in the early 1990s. "It's chaos in the streets," said a person who answered the telephone at a bread shop near the market.

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What actually set off the violence is unclear, as accounts differed between Chinese and Tibetan residents. Monks from the Ramoche Temple, a short walk from the market, reportedly began to march in the Barkhor area. The Ramoche monks intended to protest the rough treatment of monks who had marched earlier in the week, according to a Tibetan rights advocate in the United States who has communicated with people in Lhasa.

When police officers began beating the monks, Tibetans rioted in the Barkhor area, the advocate said. Angry mobs set fire to a police car and a store owned by a Chinese shopkeeper, said the advocate, who refused to be publicly identified for fear of reprisals.

But a Chinese travel agent in Lhasa, reached by