Gold Mine Workers Shot in Indonesia

A police spokesman says two employees working for U.S. company Freeport have been shot and wounded near the world's largest gold mine in eastern Indonesia.

Papua Police Spokesman Agus Rianto says the mine workers were hit Tuesday morning when a busload of 60 employees came under fire in restive Papua province.

Rianto said they were in stable condition at a nearby hospital. One was shot in the thigh and arm, while the other was hit in the hand and waist.

Freeport has been targeted by a string of recent shootings that have left three dead and injured more than a dozen.

In July, police detained 17 suspects believed involved in the series of deadly ambushes at the mine.

The men were rounded up at several locations near the Grasberg mining complex operated by U.S. conglomerate Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold, Inc..

Arizona-based Freeport has been targeted with arson, roadside bombs and blockades since production began in the 1970s during the U.S.-backed Suharto dictatorship.

Papua is home to a four-decade old, low-level insurgency against the government, and members of the Free Papua Movement - who see Freeport as a symbol of outside rule - were initially blamed by authorities for the latest violence.

Some analysts, however, believe the shootings resulted from a rivalry between the police and military over multimillion dollar illegal gold mining or protection businesses at the mine. Others blame criminal gangs.

The July shootings were the worst violence at Freeport since the killing of three schoolteachers, including two Americans, in August 2002 that sparked widespread protests by locals who feel they are not benefiting from the depletion of Papua's natural resources.

Freeport employs about 20,000 people in Papua, where it has extracted billions of dollars worth of gold and copper and still has some of the largest reserves in the world. Freeport is one of the top taxpayers to the Indonesian government, which is also a minority stake holder.

Papua, a desperately poor mountain province, lies some 2,100 miles (3,400 kilometers) east of the capital, Jakarta. Foreign journalists are prohibited from visiting the highly militarized province of about 2.5 million people.