JAYAPURA, Indonesia, July 16, 2022 (AFP) - Ten people were shot dead in Indonesia’s restive eastern province Papua on Saturday in an ambush police attributed to rebels.

Two others were also seriously injured in the shooting, which police said took place in a remote highland area when about 20 people – three armed with guns and others with sharp weapons – attacked a truck full of civilians.

Some of the victims were traders transporting their goods to another village, police said.

Papua’s ongoing insurgency aims to gain independence from Indonesia, which took control of the former Dutch colony in the 1960s. Saturday’s attack was the deadliest since March when eight telecommunications workers were shot dead.

“When the truck was stopping the KKB opened fire towards the vehicle from 50 metres away,” Papua police spokesman Ahmad Mustofa Kamal said in a statement, using an acronym to describe the area’s separatist groups.

“Ten people were killed and two others are severely injured,” he added.

The motive behind the attack remains unclear but police and the army are now investigating exactly which separatists are responsible for the incident, Kamal said.

The spokesman for The West Papua National Liberation Army, the military wing of Papua’s main separatist group, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Authorities evacuated the victims, some of whom had suffered stab wounds, by helicopter after the attack.

Indonesia has also faced protests in the underdeveloped but mineral-rich province against the creation of three new provinces.

Despite the demonstrations, parliament passed a law in late June approving the division of Papua into five administrative regions, up from two.

Many in the region claim the court’s decision did not involve local Papuans and believe it was a bid to strengthen Jakarta’s rule.

Papua declared independence from the Dutch in 1961 but neighbouring Indonesia took control two years later, promising a referendum.

The subsequent vote in favour of staying part of Indonesia, approved by the United Nations at the time, was widely considered a sham.

The region’s Melanesian population, predominantly Christian, share few cultural connections with the rest of Indonesia – which is the world’s most populous Muslim country.