Separatists Kill Three in Indonesia's Papua
Three people have been killed in Indonesia's restive eastern region of Papua, police said Thursday, in an attack claimed by separatists during which a soldier was shot dead and a civilian hacked to death.
A third civilian died after jumping into a ravine while trying to escape the ambush in the Puncak Jaya district, police said.
Tuesday's attack was claimed by a local leader of the separatist Free Papua Movement (OPM) who said only members of the security forces were killed, not civilians.
Attacks on security forces are common in Papua, where poorly-armed militants have for decades fought an insurgency on behalf of the mostly ethnic Melanesian population.
Papua province police spokesman I Gde Sumerta said that there was "an exchange of fire, the gunmen killed the soldier by shooting him in the head".
The attackers then used a machete to hack to death the male civilian driving the car the soldier had been travelling in, the spokesman said.
A second male civilian travelling with the group died after jumping into a nearby ravine as he tried to flee from the attack, said Sumerta, adding his body was found early Thursday.
Goliat Tabuni, the local OPM leader, told the local Suara Pembaruan newspaper that "the shooting was carried out by my members, on my orders".
However, he said only security forces had been killed. "Our members will not indiscriminately shoot civilians," he said.
In February suspected OPM gunmen killed eight soldiers in an attack in Puncak Jaya, known as a militant hideout, in one of the most serious assaults on security forces in the region's recent history.
Source: Agence France Presse
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