Farouk Arnaz – A hit-and-run ambush on a group of elite Mobile Brigade police officers has left one officer dead in the latest violence to hit troubled Papua.

Wednesday's attack in the rugged Puncak Jaya district is the latest in the Tingginambut area, in which an increasingly infamous group of pro-independence rebels are believed to be active.

The timing of the attack, just two weeks before the presidential election, could signal a new wave of violence in the volatile province, which experienced an upswing of anti-Indonesian sentiment and violence in the lead-up and during the legislative elections on April 9.

Comr. Marcelis, deputy chief of the Puncak Jaya Police, said that in the latest attack, a convoy of 37 officers from Puncak Jaya and the Papua Mobile Brigade, also known as Brimob, were traveling to the Tingginambut Police station to reinforce Brimob officers securing preparations for the presidential election when they were attacked at 1:30 p.m.

Marcelis, who was traveling in the convoy, said that four kilometers from Tingginambut, an unidentified group ambushed the convoy. Second Brig. Ahmad L. was shot and died with four bullets in his body, he said.

Marcelis said it was impossible to identify the assailants because they quickly disappeared into the jungle.

Asked if Goliath Tabuni, a local leader of the Free Papua Movement (OPM), was believed to be behind the attack, Marcelis said they had no evidence to suggest that was the case.

"But please tell the National Police chief, we cannot just wait here and wait for them to begin shooting at us again," he said. "We don't want to die. There must be an operation to search for the suspects."

In March, Pvt. Saiful Jusuf, a soldier from the Eme Neme Kangase Battalion, died during an attack by a group of armed separatists near a security post in Tingginambut. A month later, one policeman was killed and six others injured when a group attacked their convoy in the same area.

Papua Police Chief Insp. Gen. Bagus Ekodanto at the time blamed Goliath and his band of rebels from OPM, which has been waging a low-level struggle for independence for the resource-rich province since the 1960s.

The Free West Papua Campaign, based in the United Kingdom, recently posted on its Web site that it was "deeply concerned to hear reports of the deteriorating situation in the Puncak Jaya region of West Papua, where hundreds of Indonesian security forces are committing acts of genocide, rape and torture against the Papuan population" in their hunt for "General Goliat h."

"Women and children have been raped and young men and elders killed, homes destroyed and livestock killed," it said.Footage allegedly taken of the rebel's fight against what they believe to be Indonesian occupation of their country was smuggled out of Papua recently and posted on the BBC's news Web site.

In it Goliath is quoted as saying: "This is my land – our ancestors gave us this land. Indonesia has stolen it from us."