2) Indonesia police say 2 dead, 2 missing in Papua attacks
3) West Papua Liberation Army behind deadly Nduga attack
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1) Poll violence flares in Indonesia's Papua
Alleged separatists have opened fire on boats carrying voters in Indonesia's Papua province, killing two police officers and another person, police say.
Three people, including two police officers, have been killed in Indonesia's eastern province of Papua after alleged separatists opened fire on boats carrying voters and officials who had cast ballots in local elections, police say.
Indonesia had been on high alert for violence with elections for 171 city mayors, regents, and provincial governors held across the world's biggest Muslim-majority country on Wednesday.
Indonesia took control of Papua following a widely criticised UN-backed referendum in 1969, six years after the end of Dutch colonial rule.
Alleged separatists on Wednesday shot at two boats carrying voters and officials on a river in Torere district in Papua, killing three people, police said on Thursday. Three more police officers were missing.
The incident comes just days after a suspected separatist shooting at a tiny airport in Nduga district in Papua where three people were killed and a child injured. The election for that district's chief had to be postponed due to the violence.
Unofficial counts in Indonesia's regional elections put candidates favouring President Joko Widodo ahead in three provinces on Java island, home to more than half of the population of the world's third-largest democracy.
But candidates backed by the opposition fared better than expected in the elections, which is an important pointer for national parliamentary and presidential races in 2019.
Some hardline Islamic leaders have publicly called for the ousting of Widodo, who has pledged to protect Indonesia's tradition of pluralism and moderate Islam in the officially secular country.
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2) Indonesia police say 2 dead, 2 missing in Papua attacks
Published: June 28, 2018
JAYAPURA, Indonesia (AP) — Indonesian police say two people were killed and two are missing after gunmen attacked police and civilians in a mountainous region of easternmost Papua province.
Papua police spokesman Ahmad Musthofa Kamal says an official was killed Wednesday and two police officers are missing after gunmen shot at their speedboat, which was transporting them from Torere subdistrict where they observed local elections.
Separately, he says a motorcycle taxi driver died after being shot in the head in Waegi subdistrict on Wednesday.
A pro-independence insurgency has simmered in the formerly Dutch-controlled Papua region since it was annexed by Indonesia in 1963.
On Monday, gunmen killed three people and injured two others in an attack at an airport in the Puncak Jaya area.
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3) West Papua Liberation Army behind deadly Nduga attack
5:02 pm today
A faction of the West Papua National Liberation Army has claimed responsibility for Monday's deadly shootings in Indonesia's Nduga regency.
Three people died after gunmen targeted an aircraft transporting Indonesian paramilitary police at the airport of this remote Papuan regency.
Liberation Army gunmen launched an attack at the Trigana Air twin otter which had arrived carrying 18 Brimob personnel.
The paramilitary police had been transported from the Highlands town of Wamena to Nduga to provide security during this week's regional elections.
Two people, including the pilot, were injured before a gunfire ensued on the airfield between the Liberation Army members and Indonesian security forces.
Three people who died have been identified as migrants from Indonesia's South Sulawesi province.
A faction of the Liberation Army said it was responsible for shooting the three people, including a boy, saying he was hit by a stray bullet.
The boy's parents were the other two killed in the violence. According to reports from Papua, they were migrants from South Sulawesi who had been established traders in Nduga's township.
A PNG-based spokesperson for the Liberation Army and the Free West Papua Movment, Sebby Sambom, said their soldiers shot at the man bcause he had pulled out a gun.
"The person from Sulawesi, he took position holding a pistol and tried to shoot the Liberation Army, Free West Papua group... soldiers... That's why the Liberation army shot him Then his wife and son they came and held him. Then his wife was shot..."
The spokesman suggested that the child's death was entirely accidental. However, he alleged that the man killed was one of many migrants from other parts of Indonesia who had come to live in Papua and become undercover intelligence agents assisting Indonesia's security forces in operaions against Papuans.
"We always identify them, we have data," Mr Sembom explained.
"Some Indonesian civillians become businessmen, but they are Indonesian intelligence agents. Indonesian soldiers and police give them small stores or trade house buildings. They're everywhere."
Tensions remain high in Nduga amid bursts of gunfire that have broken out sporadically after the Army dispersed from the airfield following the deadly gunfight.
Meanwhile, the attack in Nduga is one of a series of reported incidents of deadly violence in the Highlands regencies which have disrupted the regional elections taking place this week.
In Puncak Jaya regency, three people died after being shot in Torere district yesterday.
According to CNN Indonesia, Indonesian police blamed the shooting deaths on unidentified gunmen.
Along with reported tribal violence in recent days in Yahukimo regency, the incidents cast doubt on whether the elections will proceed in these areas where Papua's provincial governor Lukas Enembe has strong support.
The Liberation Army has launched several attacks in the region since last year. Two TNI personnel were killed in Nduga last December, prompting reprisal attacks which left two civilians dead and a church burnt.
Around the same time, the Liberation Army declared a general mobilisation of all its soldiers in Papua to carry out operations against the Indonesian state and what it called "the invaders".
As well as independence, the Army's stated goal has been to close the Freeport mine, which is one of the largest sources of revenue for the Indonesian state.
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