Video provided live by CNN affiliate Hong Kong Cable showed armed police, dressed in riot gear, walking through Tai Yan Dao — near the Potala Palace where the Dalai Lama lived before going into exile 49 years ago.

There was no sign of violence between the police or residents.

CNN International’s live rebroadcast of the video was not, at least initially, blacked out by the Chinese government to viewers in that country.

The government sometimes exercises its power to censor CNN’s broadcast of stories sensitive to China by interrupting the broadcast as it is fed into the country.

The exiled government in Dharamshala in northern India, home to Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, said it had received confirmation that about 30 people had been killed, and was hearing unconfirmed ‘numbers of over 100 dead’.

Tanks and armoured vehicles were out in force in the Tibetan capital Lhasa today, a day after the worst protests against China’s rule in the Himalayan region in nearly 20 years.

China has said 10 people died in the protests.

The government-in-exile said it was deeply concerned by reports ‘emanating from all three regions of Tibet of random killings, injuries and arrest of thousands of Tibetans peacefully protesting against Chinese policy’.

The protests reflect ‘the true sentiments of Tibetans inside Tibet and the yearning to be free from the repressive Chinese regime,’ it said.

Red-robed Tibetan Buddhist monks have taken to the streets of the capital Lhasa to mark the 49th anniversary of the People’s Liberation Army crushing an uprising in Tibet against Chinese rule, which forced the Dalai Lama into exile. It appears to be the largest open protest in Lhasa since demonstrations in the late 1980s led to imposition of martial law in Tibet in 1989, when China’s current president, Hu Jintao, was Communist Party chief there.