Banjir Ambarita & Antara, Jayapura – Citing an improved security situation in the restive province of Papua in recent days, nearly 500 additional officers deployed there to bolster the ranks of the provincial police will be withdrawn, a police spokesman said on Tuesday.

Sr. Comr. Wachyono, a spokesman for the Papua Police, said that 481 members of the Mobile Brigade (Brimob) paramilitary unit who had been sent to Papua from Jakarta, East Kalimantan and North Sulawesi would leave Papua within two weeks.

"The plan is that on January 23, they will be pulled out and returned to their respective regions," Wachyono said. "They will be replaced by members of the Papua Mobile Brigade and police."

The men have served about two months in Papua, he said. They were deployed in Puncak Jaya and Paniai, both strongholds of the pro-independence Free Papua Organization (OPM), and in Timika near the Grasberg copper and huge gold mine, which has been rocked by three months of labor strikes.

The area near the mine, operated by an Indonesian subsidiary of US mining giant Freeport-McMoRan, has seen a series of deadly attacks on company vehicles traveling the road between the mining area and Tembagapura, a town in Timika.

Wachyono said a police investigation had found that the burned-out husk of a Freeport Indonesia vehicle, found overturned on Monday on the road in question, appeared to have been ambushed by gunfire.

"From the investigation at the site, the Freeport vehicle was shot at by unidentified men from both the right and left side of the road as it was passing through mile 32 in the Tembagapura mining area," Wachyono said. "The car then swerved before overturning and catching fire."

He said that while the driver of the car was found to have burned to death inside the car, a second victim was found about 1.5 meters from the car and had slash wounds on his neck and cheek. "There is also the possibility that he was shot," he added.

The police could not yet identify the assailants or their motives, he said. Police have already questioned four Freeport workers and security officials.

Ten people, all of them Indonesians, have now been killed around the mine in several ambushes and in a clash with police since the strike began at the mine in September.