Chinese police have arrested nearly 100 monks after what they describe as a riot by hundreds of Tibetans, according to state media.

The official Xinhua news agency said all but two of the 95 arrested in the ethnic Tibetan area of the western province of Qinghai on Sunday were monks.

Xinhua said the Tibetans were arrested for their involvement in a protest on Saturday said to be triggered by the disappearance of a Tibetan who had escaped from police custody.

But Thubten Samphel, a spokesman for the Tibetan government-in-exile, based in the Indian city of Dharamsala, told Al Jazeera that the protest was peaceful and was organised in response to the apparent suicide of a monk under investigation for unfurling a Tibetan flag.

"What we know is that the incident took place on Saturday, and that several monks raised the Tibetan flag, and pulled down a Chinese flag and they were arrested."

"The protest was peaceful, and not violent."

The demonstrations come a week after politically-sensitive anniversaries in which Tibetan exiles marked 50 years since a failed uprising against Chinese rule and one year since violent clashes between protesters and Chinese authorities in Lhasa and other Tibetan areas.

There has been an increased security presence in the area since the crackdown last year.

But in recent weeks, a monk set himself on fire at the Kirti monastery in the western province Sichuan and a bomb was thrown at a government office, but caused no casualties.