Demta – The separatist Free Papua Movement (OPM) in Indonesias remote Irian Jaya province was responsible for a market attack near the capital Jayapura last week in which they killed two policemen and a security guard, their reclusive top commander told AFP.

"The attack was discussed during a meeting of the highest commanders of the National Liberation Soldiers (TPN) of the OPM near the border with Papua New Guinea on November 23," Brigadier General Richard Hans Joweni said in an interview conducted over the weekend.

"The details and targets I left up to our armed forces commander, Mathias Wenda," he said at a camp near the coastal town of Demta, some 100 kilometers west of Jayapura, where recruits and members undergo guerrilla training.

Early last Thursday, rebels armed with bows, arrows, spears, axes and crude guns descended from the hills that ring Jayapuras outskirts and killed the two police officers and a security guard, and burned down shops on a street named "Guerrilla."

Yoweni said the attack was to alert the public his rebels had mobilised following the national government's enforced lowering of the separatist Morning Star flag on December 1, the anniversary of an unrecognised declaration of Papuan independence.

"The aim was to attract public attention. That is, to draw the peoples attention to the fact that the OPM, especially the TPN soldiers, are moving. To show that we are here, and we are ready to act," he said.

In retaliation, crack Indonesian police troops attacked a dormitory in the hills above the marketplace area and killed three students. Police also wounded four others with gunshots and beat dozens. They arrested 99, and three remained in custody Monday.

Yoweni is known within the group as the supreme commander and minister of defence. His position is above that of Mathias Wenda, the group's self-described armed forces commander, and Kelly Kwalik, the chief of general staff.

Students recounted to AFP how the separatist rebels ran through the Ninmin dormitory shouting: "Wake up, get down and help! Were (OPM commander) Kelly Kwaliks men, OPM, OPM!"

The students said they refused the rebels' appeals, but later saw them pointing to the dormitory and telling people they had come from the building.

Asked why the attackers had apparently drawn police in the direction of the students, Yoweni replied it was a "complex matter." "The [guerrilla] attackers should have hidden their trail, to protect any supporters they had among the students," he said. "[But] it is a possibility that [the police] seeing they got no support from the students, they countered by making the students the subsequent targets."

Yoweni said the OPM-TPN viewed the police attack on the students "very seriously." He continued: "They [the guerrillas] attacked. But then other people became the targets. We are taking that into account." Yoweni said the group blamed by police for the attack, Satgas Koteka, was actually a name used by TPN fighters to "hide their identities."

Since November 29 hundreds of highlander people have been massing across the 200 meter neutral zone between Papua New Guinea and Indonesia at Muara Thami, which is under the control of a man who identifies himself as an OPM commander acting on the orders of OPM military commander Mathias Wenda to attack Indonesia.

Yoweni said a draft plan to mass people at the border was drawn up at the November 23 meeting, as part of a "guerrilla military strategy for the future." "But the concept didnt involve gathering them there as refugees," he said. "We are preparing our troops to launch a kind of military offensive, so people are being massed there as part of a political strategy."