(Updates with mine spokesman saying operations not affected;
adds background)
TIMIKA, Indonesia (AFP)--An Indonesian policeman who fled an
ambush near U.S. company Freeport McMoran Copper & Gold's (FCX)
giant mine in Papua was found dead Monday, bringing the death toll
from a string of attacks to three, police said.
The body of Marsom Patipulohi was pulled from a ravine near the
road to the company's Grasberg gold and copper mine with apparent
stab wounds, said a policeman who declined to be named.
The body was found roughly 20 kilometers (13 miles) from the
site where 29-year-old Australian Freeport technician Drew Nicholas
Grant was killed Saturday, and a Freeport guard was killed in a
firefight Sunday.
The policeman was apparently abducted and killed after running
away from the Sunday attack.
"I saw stab wounds to his neck," the police officer said.
National police spokesman Sulistyo Ishak confirmed that an
officer had been found dead, but gave no further details.
"A body has been found but we're still getting information on
the ground. Some say he was shot, others say he fell, so we're
still investigating," he said.
Indonesia has sent investigators and elite counter-terror police
to guard the mine area after the shootings, which have echoes of a
2002 attack in which two U.S. schoolteachers and an Indonesian
colleague were killed.
An alleged commander of the separatist Free Papua Movement was
sentenced to life in prison in 2006 in connection with those
deaths, after a joint investigation by Indonesian police and the
U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation.
However, local human rights activists have accused the
Indonesian military of orchestrating the violence in order to gain
greater protection payments from the mining company.
A spokesman for PT Freeport Indonesia, the local unit of
Freeport-McMoran, said earlier that mining operations hadn't been
affected by the latest attacks as they "took place far from the
mine."
Police have said military or police-issue weapons were used in
the shootings, but they haven't indicated who they believe is
responsible.
Papua is the scene of a long-running separatist insurgency by
poorly armed local guerrillas, who have reportedly denied
responsibility for killing the Australian.
The Grasberg mine sits on the world's largest gold and copper
reserves and is a lightning rod for discontent over rule from
Jakarta, which took control of the eastern region in 1969 in a
U.N.-backed vote widely seen as rigged.