HONG KONG — Five Tibetans have died in police custody in southwestern China after a protest last week during which residents were shot and wounded, according to the exiled Tibetan government and other groups abroad. The accounts described a flaring of tensions in a mountainous area of Sichuan Province that has long been in turmoil over the Chinese government’s rule.

The reports of deaths and bloodshed have not been confirmed by Chinese state news media, and public security and government officials in the region declined to comment when called repeatedly on Wednesday.

But the Tibetan government in exile, in Dharamsala, India, said Wednesday that five men had died in police custody after being detained following a protest last week in which the police shot at and used tear gas on an unarmed crowd in Ganzi Prefecture in Sichuan. Initially, reports from the exiled government and other groups said two men had died.

The region, known to Tibetans as Kardze or Garze, has long been a center of protest and defiance against the Chinese government. Residents had gathered to demand that the government release a respected leader of the village of Shugpa in Ganzi, who had been detained after he complained “against the mistreatment and harassment of Tibetans by the Chinese authorities,” the Tibetan administration said on its website.