Indonesia: 3 killed in two attacks by West Papua Liberation Army (WPLA) fighters
A government soldier, his wife and an independence fighter were killed in two separate attacks in Indonesia’s restive Papua province, security officers and a rebel spokesperson said Thursday.
Clashes have escalated in eastern Indonesia’s Papua province since last year, when rebels set fire to several schools and killed two teachers in a village in Puncak district.
Attackers from the West Papua Liberation Army, the military wing of the Free Papua Organization, fatally shot a soldier, killed his wife by slashing her neck, and injured their two children in an assault at a house Thursday morning in Elelim village in Yalimo district, said Papua deputy military chief Lt. Col. Candra Kurniawan.
The soldier’s wife, a midwife who helped indigenous Papuan women give birth, died on the way to a clinic, Kurniawan said, adding that police and military forces were searching for the attackers, who fled into the jungle.