Indonesian general is killed by rebels

JAYAPURA, Indonesia — An Indonesian brigadier general was killed in ongoing clashes between security forces and a rebel group in restive Papua province, authorities said Monday.

The clashes started April 8 in Indonesia’s easternmost Papua province after rebels set fire to three schools and shot to death a teacher in Beoga village in Puncak district. Another teacher was killed a day later as rebels fired at a teachers’ housing complex and burned down a house of a tribal chief in Beoga.

Police, military and intelligence forces joined Operation Nemangkawi to find the attackers, who authorities believe belong to the West Papua Liberation Army, the military wing of the Free Papua Organization.

Rebels have been fighting a low-level insurgency since the early 1960s, when Indonesia annexed Papua, a former Dutch colony. Papua was incorporated into Indonesia in 1969 after a U.N.-sponsored ballot that was seen as a sham by many.

Papua’s intelligence agency chief, Brig. Gen. Gusti Putu Danny Nugraha, was shot in the head and died in a rebel ambush, said Col. Iqbal Alqudusy, the operation’s spokesperson.

The ambush occurred while the general was patrolling Beoga’s neighboring village of Dambet with 13 other personnel on motorcycles Sunday afternoon after rebels set fire to an elementary school and houses in the village, he said.

He said security forces managed to evacuate the body Monday morning while a military and police force was hunting “an armed separatist criminal group.”

“We are on the highest alert as instructed to all troops on the ground,” Alqudusy said.

In televised remarks, President Joko Widodo expressed condolences to the family and the Indonesian people for the general’s death.

Flanked by the vice president and chiefs of the military, police and intelligence agency, he also ordered government forces to hunt down the rebels.