Jakarta – Security forces broke up a peaceful protest by thousands of residents in Indonesia's remote Irian Jaya province, reports said Tuesday.

The state Antara news agency said the mass demonstration in the district of Fakfak was staged shortly after noon Monday to push for the resignation of district head, Colonel Suparlan Pasambuna.

The protestors walked in procession from Sungai village five kilometers to the district administration office in Fakfak town, on the far west coast of the territory, Antara said.

When the huge banner-waving crowd descended on the district administration office, the staff panicked and fled, Antara said.

Security forces then broke up the demonstration and herded the crowd into military and police trucks to take them back to Sungai village.

But the convoy was halted on the way by a mob of Seram island settlers armed with crude weapons, axes and machetes. While the Irian Jayans fled the Seramese flooded into Fakfak and began to threaten security forces.

Antara said the Fakfak police and military chiefs were out of town at the time and duty officers refused to comment Tuesday without the approval of their superiors.

Last week, hundreds of Fakfak residents ran amok and damaged a number of government offices in protest against a land dispute ruling by the Fakfak court.

Irian Jaya, formerly Dutch New Guinea, has seen rising protests in the past two years, most recenly against Jakarta's splitting the huge province, which shares a land border with independent Papua New Guinea, into three separate provinces.