U.S. Consulate Building Set Ablaze By Renee Schoof Associated Press Writer Saturday, May 8, 1999; 11:48 p.m. EDT BEIJING (AP) -- Chinese protesters broke into and severely burned a U.S. consulate building in southwest China, an Embassy spokesman said Sunday. A large number of people broke into the consulate compound in Chengdu and severely burned the consulate general's residence, said Tom Cooney, a U.S. Embassy spokesman in Beijing. No U.S. staff were injured and Chinese police used tear gas to disperse the crowd, he said. Cooney also said that U.S. officials in Beijing, where the Embassy was surrounded by protesters for the second day Sunday, were not getting adequate protection. ``We feel that we are under a state of siege here. We don't have adequate security,'' he said. He said the embassy had made a strong protest to Chinese authorities Saturday to provide better protection. ``We don't have the ability to move between our buildings like we should,'' Cooney said. Cooney said there were no Americans known to have been hurt in the protests in Beijing and elsewhere. All U.S. diplomatic offices in China, except in Hong Kong, would be closed Monday and Tuesday, he said. The communist government generally bans protests for fear they will escalate into unrest. But officials apparently felt that stopping people from publicly expressing outrage over the embassy bombing could further inflame them and possibly turn emotions against the government. Yugoslavia's state-run Tanjug news agency reported four people were killed when NATO missiles struck the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade on Saturday, but Yugoslav media reports later lowered the death toll to three. More than 20 were injured and one person was missing, China's state-run Xinhua News Agency said. A Xinhua reporter and two reporters for a national newspaper, Guangming Daily, were killed, it said. NATO spokesman Jamie Shea said NATO forces mistakenly hit the embassy with ``precision guided munitions.'' He said NATO offered ``sincere regrets'' to Chinese authorities. On Saturday, U.S. officials in Beijing advised staff and other Americans in the Chinese capital ``to raise their security awareness,'' said spokesman Bill Palmer. An embassy notice said there was ``the possibility for acts of retaliation against Americans and American interests worldwide.'' Students said they were outraged because they believed NATO intentionally targeted the Belgrade structure. Protesters at the Chengdu consulate scaled walls, broke windows in the break-in Saturday night, he said. Police dispersed the crowd only after they had ransacked the building, he said. ``It was scary and there was a lot of damage,'' he said. Protesters in Beijing hurled rocks and lumps of concrete at embassy buildings and cars in Beijing on Saturday and Sunday in the protests over NATO's accidental bombing of the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia. Not since the government crushed democracy protests at Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989, have students and other Chinese marched through Beijing streets in large numbers with banners and slogans. The march came after protesters attacked the U.S. and British embassies in Beijing with chunks of concrete Saturday, smashing windows and cars. Police pushed back demonstrators who tried to ram a van and hurl a burning American flag through the U.S. Embassy's main gate. The crowd of 1,000 protesters smashed up squares of concrete that had been left in piles by workers rebuilding sidewalks and hurled them at both the U.S. and British compounds. Windows at the American compound were broken, and at least four cars belonging to staff members were smashed. A group of protesters tried to ignite one car and then started shoving police who stopped them. Early Sunday, another wave of buses -- apparently arranged by universities -- arrived with more students. Hundreds of police regulated the flow of protesters but did not stop the demonstrations. Signs Sunday along the protest route showed demonstrators which way to march. Protests also were held Saturday in Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Hong Kong. The demonstrations in Guangzhou, a large city in southern China, involved tens of thousands of students from more than 10 universities who converged on the U.S., British, French, Italian and Dutch consulates, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported. China's entirely state-controlled news media have heavily reported civilian casualties from the NATO strikes, but have not reported on attacks by Yugoslav forces on ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. China has its own restive ethnic regions and fears NATO has set a dangerous precedent by attacking a sovereign nation without U.N. authorization. In Beijing, the protests began with well-organized ranks of student demonstrators and later turned into a rowdy mob that threw rocks and tried to set cars on fire. State-run television news reported the protest, a sign the government sanctioned it. Police stood in cordons at least six people deep in front of the main embassy building to keep crowds back. Demonstrators broke through at least once. © Copyright 1999 The Associated Press