Paul Tait, Sydney – At least three Papuan men fired about 200 rounds from rifles and shotguns into a convoy of mainly US teachers, killing three, near a huge gold mine in Indonesia's Papua two months ago, ambush victims said on Sunday.
Speaking publicly for the first time since the August 31 ambush, the eight US survivors of the attack described in an e-mail to Reuters they were trapped for about 30 minutes as the gunmen fired methodically into their vehicles. "We waited in sorrow and pain, preparing to die," the victims said of the ambush, in which 10 people were injured.
Their account is the first reliable description to emerge of the ambush, which is still under investigation. Speculation over who was responsible has swung wildly from Papuan separatists to the Indonesian army or Papuans working for Jakarta's military.
US teachers Saundra Hopkins and her husband Ken Balk said they had expected to die and said good-bye to each other and their six-year-old daughter Taia as they lay wounded. "They cried and hugged and told each other how much they were loved," the victims said.
Hopkins said the party was returning from a picnic to the high-altitude town of Tembagapura along a winding, narrow road near the world's largest gold and copper mine, operated by US miner Freeport-McMoRan Copper and Gold Inc in the province formerly known as Irian Jaya.
She said she saw one of the gunmen clearly in profile. "He was Papuan, with bushy hair held back by a head band," Hopkins told Reuters. "He was wearing a black T-shirt and dark brown camouflage pants. He was holding a rifle," said Hopkins, who had been working with her husband at a Tembagapura school for Freeport employees for about a year.
She said she saw other men, one of whom was wearing a green army jacket, run down an embankment from the road.
Investigations continue
Indonesian police say they are investigating several possibilities, including whether the Indonesian military were involved in the ambush.
An Australian newspaper reported on Saturday that US intelligence services had intercepted messages between Indonesian army commanders that implicated them. The Sydney Morning Herald said a source close to the US embassy in Jakarta suggested the ambush was linked to a protection racket targeting the mine.
Australian academic Dr Harold Crouch said identification of the gunmen as Papuan did not rule out military involvement. He pointed to the military's use of militias that killed hundreds in East Timor after it voted for independence.
"It doesn't even have to be militia, it can be Papuans in the army for that matter," said Crouch, senior fellow in Indonesian politics at the Australian National University in Canberra.
The Free Papua Movement, which has fought a low-level guerrilla war against Indonesian rule for decades, has denied responsibility for the ambush. It blamed the Indonesian military.
US teachers Ted Burgon and Rick Spier, sitting in the front seat of the first of two four-wheel drive vehicles, were hit by shots fired through the windscreen and died almost immediately. Indonesian Bambang Riwanto also died in the first vehicle.
Hopkins said she stood during the attack and screamed "Gurus, gurus, escola Amerika" – Bahasa Indonesia for "Teachers, teachers, American school" – to try to deter the gunmen.