An 18-year-old Tibetan nun set herself on fire in western China in the latest such protest against Beijing’s handling of the vast ethnic Tibetan regions it rules, an overseas activist group said yesterday.

Two former Tibetan monks set themselves on fire in far western China, in what an activist group said was the latest in a series of self-immolation protests against Chinese rule.

Defiant Buddhist monks banned from marking a key Tibetan new year prayer festival marched in protest in south-west China, human rights groups said today.

China says it will put the Lhasa rioters on trial and reopen Tibet to tourism by May, underscoring the government’s drive to close the book on recent unrest well before the summer’s Beijing Olympics.