Jakarta - Warning shots were fired on Thursday as mobs attempted to prevent police from clearing barricades from the streets in a town in Indonesia's easternmost province of Irian Jaya, police said.

"They were only warning shots, as many people were preventing members from the Brimob (police mass-control brigade) from clearing the streets of obstacles and makeshift barricades around Oyehee [area] at about noon," a policeman on duty at the Nabire district police office said.

The policeman, who identified himself as Sergeant Wayan, said no one was injured in the incident and that the mobs had again erected obstacles on the streets after the incident.

But the Institute for the Study and Advocacy of Human Rights (Elsham) in Jayapura, the main city of Irian Jaya some 560 kilometres west of Nabire, said that one man was injured in the shooting.

Wellem Manimbara, 32, was shot in the hands and was currently under treatment at the state hospital in Nabire, an Elsham report reaching here said. However the report did not say how serious the injury was and the hospital could not be immediately reached for confirmation.

The incident followed a shooting in Nabire on February 28 which left two demonstrators killed, shot dead by security personnel, Wayan said. Elsham said three people were shot dead in that incident.

On Wednesday, a mob of some 2,000 people, many armed with knives, machetes and bows and arrows, attacked the district police headquarters in Nabire, leaving one of the attackers injured. Some 50 people had attacked a Brimob barracks in Nabire, on Monday and troops opened fire to stop the mobs from entering the compound.