JAYAPURA, Indonesia (AP) — Gunmen launched attacks Saturday near a U.S.-owned gold and copper mine in eastern Indonesia, wounding two policemen and a civilian, police said. The attacks happened near Freeport Indonesia’s mine in the easternmost province of Papua. Freeport
JAYAPURA, Indonesia (AP) — Gunmen launched attacks Saturday near a U.S.-owned gold and copper mine in eastern Indonesia, wounding two policemen and a civilian, police said.
The attacks happened near Freeport Indonesia’s mine in the easternmost province of Papua. Freeport Indonesia is a unit of Phoenix, Arizona-based Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc.
Two officers from the police’s elite force of Brimob were attacked before dusk while searching for the gunmen, who earlier had fired on two Freeport cars, including one driven by an American man, said Papua police spokesmen Lt. Col. Suryadi Diaz.
The wounded officers were being treated at Freeport’s Tembagapura Hospital.
In the first attack, which happened Saturday morning near the mining town of Tembagapura, an Indonesian man was injured while driving a car, while the American man escaped unharmed.
Diaz said the gunmen were from the Free Papua Movement. A low-level insurgency for independence has continued in the region since it was transferred from Dutch to Indonesian rule in 1963.
