KATHMANDU, Jan 30 (AFP) - Nepalese police at the border with China have arrested 24 Tibetans for illegally entering Nepal, a police source said Thursday.

"Those Tibetans arrested at the Lamabagar entrypoint in Dolakha district, 200 kilometres (125 miles) northeast of here, included 18 men and six women," the source said.

"The Dolakha District Police Office has sent the arrestees to the Department of Immigration in the Nepalese capital for further action," he said.

The police source did not say when the Tibetans were arrested.

Tibetans enter Nepal to go to Dharamsala in northern India, the home in exile of their spiritual and religious leader the Dalai Lama.

The Dalai Lama has been living in India along with over 100,000 Tibetans since a failed uprising in the 1950s against China's occupation of the Himalayan region.

Though Nepal has banned demonstrations and meetings against China by the over 25,000 Tibetans living in Nepal, protests still occur from from time to time.

Nepal has vowed that it will not allow anyone, especially its neighbours India and China, to "use its soil to hatch a conspiracy against a friendly country."

Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba stressed during a visit to China last year that Nepal would not let anyone use its territory to launch activities that could be detrimental to its neighbours.

In the last ten months police have arrested some 2,360 Tibetans for illegally entering Nepal.