Jakarta – Riots in Indonesia's Irian Jaya province have left one man dead and one wounded, while rebels abducted six forestry officials in separatist unrest, reports and residents said Tuesday.

One man was killed when mobs rampaged in the town of Sorong in the west, resident Rahayu said, while a group of armed separatists abducted the officials in Arso sub-district near the border with Papua New Guinea on Monday.

The rampage in Sorong broke out after police forcefully took down a separatist flag hoisted by some 50 pro-independence supporters at a park near the district police and military offices.

"Mobs went on a rampage in downtown Sorong ... pelting houses with stones and erecting roadblocks," Rahayu, from one of the churches in Sorong, said by telephone. One man died after being attacked after his motorcycle was stopped at a roadblock, the Suara Karya daily said.

The state Antara news agency said police opened fire, wounding one separatist in the neck, when the group resisted efforts to haul down the flag.

Rahayu said shops which hastily closed down during the riot had reopened Tuesday and public transport was back on the streets.

A staff member at the state hospital in Sorong, Komaru, said the dead man was settler from outside Irian Jaya.

"A man was beaten to death by a crowd and his body was brought here and after an autopsy, it was immediately taken home by his family," said Komaru.

The Suara Karya said 19 people had been arrested in Sorong, two of them women, but police in the town could not immediately be reached for comment.

In Arso subdistrict, suspected members of the Papua Merdeka (Free Papua) movement abducted six employees of the district forestry office on a survey, the Suara Karya said.

The survey involved 13 people. Two escaped and reported the kidnapping to the police while the whereabouts of the other five were unknown, the daily said quoting a source at the Irian Jaya military command headquarters.

A spokeswoman at the Irian Jaya police headquarters told AFP by telephone from Jayapura, the main city in the province that there were reports of 17 people being abducted in Arso, but she had no details. Officials at the Irian Jaya military information office could not be reached for comment.

In a separate incident at Wamena, in the mountain range of central Irian Jaya, hundreds of people went on a rampage on Sunday, damaging 20 shops at the Nayak market and six cars, the Suara Karya said.

The rioters had been on their way to the district police station to demand the release of six men arrested during an anti-gambling raid, the daily said.

Police fired warning shots to disperse the crowd and the six men were released after they signed a statement pledging not to gamble again.

The Papua Merdeka movement has been fighting for the independent state of West Papua since the former Dutch Western Guinea became Indonesian territory in 1963. The United Nations accorded its recognition of Indonesian sovereingty there in 1969.