Indonesia police hold three suspects in Irian Jaya killings

JAKARTA (Reuters) -- Indonesian police have released nearly 100 people detained after a pro-independence mob attacked a police station in rebellious Irian Jaya province last week, killing at least three people.

General Sylvanus Wenas, chief of police in the remote and resource-rich eastern province, said Sunday three people were still being held over the pre-dawn attack last Thursday.

Two policemen and a civil servant were killed in the raid on the police station on the outskirts of Jayapura, Irian Jaya's capital, part of a cycle of rising violence in the troubled territory.

"We released almost all of them on Saturday, but three are still being detained because we have strong evidence that they were involved in the killings," Wenas told Reuters by telephone from Jayapura, 2,300 miles east of Jakarta.

"We don't have strong evidence against the rest of them," Wenas said, adding those released were indigenous Irianese.

Wenas added that on Saturday, Irianese rebels attacked a lumberyard just inside Irian's border with Papua New Guinea, killing two workers and wounding two others.

Authorities had dispatched dozens of elite police to hunt for separatists along the border before the attack on the lumberyard.

Rebels have been fighting a low-scale guerrilla war for independence for decades, after Indonesia wrested control of Irian Jaya from the Dutch in the 1960s.

Demands for independence have simmered for decades in Irian Jaya, also known as West Papua, fueled by human rights abuses, ethnic tensions and resentment at Jakarta's plundering of its mineral and resources wealth.

Jungle-clad Irian Jaya in the east and the staunchly Muslim province of Aceh on the northern tip of Sumatra island are Indonesia's two main separatist hotspots.

On Saturday night, a grenade was thrown at the gate of the Aceh governor's residence while he was meeting with the national forestry minister, the official Antara news agency reported. Two people were wounded in the attack, which caused minor damage.

The two senior officials were not injured, and no arrests have been made.

Indonesia has offered both Irian and Aceh special autonomy in a package expected to be ready next May.

In an interview with the Media Indonesia daily on Sunday, chief security minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said a draft of the Aceh deal should be ready within two weeks, and Irian's soon after. He reiterated that separatism would not be tolerated.

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