Police kill Papuan rebel leader

Police shot dead on Wednesday a separatist rebel leader accused in the deaths of eight people including an Australian near the Freeport gold mine in restive Papua province, an official said as quoted by AP.

Kelly Kwalik, a leader in the Free Papua Movement, was shot as he tried to escape an early morning police raid on a house in the mountain village of Gorong Gorong in the remote eastern province, police spokesman Nanan Sukarna said.

He died hours later in a medical clinic in the nearby mining town of Timika, Sukarna said, adding that Kwalik had been armed with a revolver.

Kwalik had ordered ambushes on the road to the world's largest gold mine in central Papua, operated by Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. of Phoenix, Arizona. The attacks between July 8 and Nov. 2 killed 8 people and wounded 37, Sukarna said.

Police had recently arrested several rebels who led them to the house and told them that they had carried out the ambushes on Kwalik's orders, he said.

"He is responsible for the shootings," Sukarna told reporters in Jakarta.

Sukarna also said Kwalik had ordered a 2002 attack on a vehicle convoy headed toward the Freeport mine that killed three teachers ? two American and an Indonesian.(*)