FILE PHOTO: Papuan students demonstrate for the independence of Papua province, at the police headquarters in Surabaya on Dec. 1, 2021, to coincide with the anniversary of the Free Papua Movement. - AFP
JAKARTA: Indonesia's military said Thursday (Oct 16) it reclaimed a village in the restive Papua region following a battle with bullets and arrows that it said left 14 separatist insurgents dead. Insurgents disputed the account, saying that only three of the dead were combatants and that troops killed nine villagers.
The battle erupted Wednesday morning when dozens of rebels armed with military-grade weapons and bows and arrows attacked troops as they prepared to assault a rebel post in Soanggama village in Intan Jaya district of Central Papua province, military spokesman Lt. Col. Iwan Dwi Prihartono said.
The soldiers routed the rebels following a six-and-a-half-hour battle and recaptured the village, which had been a hotbed of the insurgency, Prihartono said in a statement.
Rebels in Papua have been fighting a low-level insurgency since the early 1960s, when Indonesia annexed the region, a former Dutch colony. Papua was incorporated into Indonesia in 1969, after a UN-sponsored ballot that was widely seen as a sham.
Prihartono said the bodies of 14 insurgents were recovered after the battle, and that there were no casualties on the government side. The soldiers also seized a homemade rifle, four air rifles, rounds of ammunition, a scope, binoculars, communication equipment, documents and a "morning star” flag - a separatist symbol.
"The rest of the rebels fled into the jungle, and we took over their base,” Prihartono said.
Sebby Sambom, a spokesman for the West Papua Liberation Army, the military wing of the Free Papua Organisation, denied the military’s claims, saying that there had been no rebel base in the village, and that nine of the 14 dead were "innocent residents” shot by the troops. He said only three of those killed were rebels.
"We have rules of war, we will not set up our base in a residential area,” Sambom said.
At one point, soldiers surrounded a civilian home that they suspected of being a rebel post and massacred eight people there, Sambom said.
Violence in the region has spiked in recent years, with dozens of rebels, security forces and civilians killed. In April, the rebels attacked a gold panning camp in the Yahukimo regency, killing 17 people. The rebels said the victims were members of Indonesia’s army disguised as gold miners, a claim that was denied by authorities. - AP
