By
The Associated Press
JAKARTA, Indonesia - Hundreds of police and troops patrolled a remote western New Guinea town yesterday after as many as 40 people were killed in fierce clashes with separatists fighting for independence from Indonesia, officials and news reports said.
Mobs beheaded or burned some victims to death in fighting in Wamena in West Papua province on Friday and Saturday, state-run Antara news agency reported.
Many of the dead were given a mass burial late Saturday.
Order had been restored yesterday, provincial police chief Brig. Gen. Silvanus Wenas said in a telephone interview from the provincial capital, Jayapura.
"It is safe and quiet now. There are many troops on the streets," he told The Associated Press.
The private SCTV network quoted other police as saying at least 40 people had been killed. Antara put the toll at 28 dead, but said the figure was expected to rise as many families had reported relatives missing.
Police said most of the dead were settlers from elsewhere in Indonesia who were killed by angry separatists and indigenous villagers.
However, local human rights activists claimed many of the victims had been shot to death by police.
The violence in West Papua, also known as Irian Jaya, was the worst in the province in years and erupted when police pulled down outlawed rebel "Morning Star" flags on Friday.
The flying of rebel flags has become a symbolic act of defiance against Indonesia's central government and military, which has rejected calls for independence for the resource-rich, but largely underdeveloped region.
Villagers attacked police with bows and arrows and machetes, but after being repelled by gunfire they turned on newcomers in the town.
Indigenous Papuans are ethnically and culturally different from elsewhere in Indonesia.
They have long resented the presence of settlers from other parts of the country who dominate commerce, as well as the security forces, in the province, about 2,300 miles east of Indonesia's capital, Jakarta.
Further violence was feared after Wenas announced that security forces would continue to pull down rebel flags across the province.
Police said they had detained 59 people and had charged 15 of them in the killings.
The province, which covers the western half of New Guinea, has been wracked by separatist violence since Indonesia annexed it in 1963 after generations of Dutch colonial rule.
