Separatist rebels have killed three soldiers in an attack on their post in Indonesia’s Papua province on Thursday, the military said.

The soldiers were guarding the post in Gome District when they came under fire, said provincial military spokesman, Colonel Aqsha Erlangga.

“There was an exchange of gunfire and as a result, three soldiers were killed and another wounded,” he said.

The Indonesian government designated separatist insurgents as terrorists last year after an army general was killed in a rebel ambush.

The killing prompted President Joko Widodo to order a crackdown on the separatist group.

Indigenous people have fought for nationhood in the Papua region, which consists of the Papua and West Papua provinces, since the 1960s.

But deadly clashes between rebels and government security forces have intensified in the past few years.

The military and police personnel were accused of human rights abuses in Papua, a mainly Melanesian region that was incorporated into Indonesia in a UN-administered ballot that rights groups and pro-independence activists criticised as a sham.

NAN