Separatist rebels in Indonesia’s easternmost province of Papua have killed a New Zealand helicopter pilot but four passengers on board were uninjured, police said.
Glenn Malcolm Koning, a pilot for Indonesian airline PT Intan Angkasa Air Services, was shot dead, said Faisal Ramadani, a national police official and head of Papua’s Joint Security and Peace Forces. Ramadani said the gunmen were suspected to be members of the West Papua Liberation Army, the armed wing of the Free Papua Movement.
Koning was shot after the plane landed in Arama, a remote village in central Papua province. Ramadani said the gunmen released the indigenous Papuan passengers and set the plane on fire.
“All the passengers were safe as they were residents of Arama village,” Ramadani said, adding that the village was in a mountainous area that could only be reached by helicopter. Joint security forces were deployed to search for the attackers, who had fled into the jungle.
New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Embassy in Jakarta did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The shooting came nearly 18 months after the kidnapping of another New Zealand pilot, Philip Mertens, who remains in custody, and police said both incidents were perpetrated by the same rebel group.
The rebel West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB) said it had not received any reports of the incident cited by police and could not immediately confirm the pilot’s killing on Monday.
Small-scale fighting for independence from Indonesia has raged in the resource-rich western province of Papua, with separatists launching more lethal and frequent attacks as they improve their weapons. Indonesian forces have been accused of torturing and killing Papuan civilians.
A TPNPB spokesman said on Saturday that they had agreed to the release of Mertens, who was kidnapped on February 7 last year after landing in a small passenger plane in the remote mountain area of Nduga.
The New Zealand government has repeatedly called for the pilot’s immediate release, and the TPNPB has released multiple videos of Mertens, including one in which he is surrounded by Papuan fighters, calling for mediation.
Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
