Jakarta – Police in Indonesia's Papua on Monday denied allegations that four students were shot dead in a revenge attack linked to a group of separatist refugees fleeing from the province to Australia.

According to police, a clash in the Waghete area last Friday occurred after police asked residents to stop extorting road users, resulting in a mob attack on a station that in turn led to security forces firing into a crowd of 100.

A 13-year old high school student was killed, Papuan provincial police spokesman Kartono Wangsadisastra said last week.

But Benny Giay, from the Indonesian human rights group Elsham Papua, told the Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday that four students were shot and killed when they were ambushed on their way to school. It said the 13-year-old high school student Moses Douw was one of those killed.

Kartono on Monday denied the claim. "That is entirely untrue. There were three people shot in that single incident. One was killed and the two others were injured," he said, adding that he stood by his account of the circumstances that led to Douw's death.

Kartono said that an investigation into the incident would be carried out and it was not known whether police or soldiers fired the fatal bullet. Giay could not be reached for comment Monday.

The paper also reported that Douw was said by activists to be a close relative of one of dozens of Papuan refugees who landed in northern Australia last Wednesday.

Australia asked Indonesia at the weekend for information about the shooting.

The group reportedly included prominent pro-independence activists, and their boat featured a large sign alleging military oppression in Papua, a former Dutch colony that Indonesia took over in the 1960s.

The military and the government here have denied their claims.

A sporadic and low-level separatist insurgency has rumbled on in Papua for decades, with many Papuans upset over their share of revenue from resource extraction in the province amid allegations of military human rights abuses.