http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia-pacific/2009/07/2009715822517357.html
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
11:45 Mecca time, 08:45 GMT
Police shot in fresh Papua attack
Security has been stepped up in and around the Grasberg mine
since the shootings [Reuters]
Two Indonesian police officers have been shot and wounded in the latest
in a series of attacks near a US-owned mine in Indonesia's remote Papua region.
According to officials gunmen ambushed police on Wednesday along a road
linking the town of Timika and the massive Grasberg gold and copper mining
complex.
The shooting was the fifth such incident in as many days.
The attacks have left three people dead, including one Australian mine
employee, and nine others wounded.
One of the officers shot in Wednesday's attack was in critical condition,
officials said.
Police have been combing the jungle around the sprawling Grasberg complex
in the hunt for those behind the attacks, but so far no arrests have been made.
The Grasberg complex is majority owned by Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold
Incorporated, based in the US state of Arizona.
The complex employs 20,000 people and includes the world's largest gold
mine.
On Tuesday a Freeport vehicle also came under fire, but no one was hurt
in the incident.
Insurgency
Papua, a poor and mountainous province, lies some 3,400km east of the
Indonesian capital, Jakarta.
It is home to a 40-year-old insurgency that has denounces the Freeport
mine as a symbol of outside rule.
Many Papuans are resentful because the mine earns billions of dollars in
profit from the region's natural resources, little or none of which makes it
back to the local community.
Indonesian media, however, have quoted rebels as denying involvement in
the shootings, and Indonesian officials and experts have said they doubt
whether the rebels have the organisation or unity to mount coordinated attacks.
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