Death toll in Irian shooting rises to 19
JAKARTA (JP): The death toll from the bizarre shooting spree in Irian Jaya last Monday rose to 19 when four more victims died of their wounds, a senior military official said yesterday.
Armed Forces (ABRI) General Affairs Chief Lt. Gen. Soeyono did not specify if the dead were civilian or military but said all of the victims were buried in Irian Jaya.
"Relatives of the deceased are free to remove the remains after four years if they wish to do so," he said in a press statement.
The statement released by ABRI's information service was mostly an excerpt from the remarks Soeyono made Thursday at a military gathering in Medan, North Sumatra.
He said that burying the soldiers in the area where they died on duty is standard Armed Forces procedure and not a trick to cover up what happened.
Fifteen people were killed and 13 others wounded when a second lieutenant from the Army's Special Force, Kopassus, went berserk on Monday.
Four of the 15 killed in the Timika hangar on Monday were civilians, including a New Zealand pilot working in Irian Jaya.
Soeyono said that the trigger-happy red beret soldier was temporarily deranged by a bout of tropical malaria when he indiscriminately shot up people at the Timika airport hangar.
Soeyono said the suspect, who has only been identified as Second Lieutenant SNP, was shot in the leg before he surrendered. He has since been brought to Jakarta for questioning.
The suspect hid with his gun, Soeyono said reconstructing the bloody incident. Other soldiers, despite the deaths of their superiors and colleagues, could have shot him dead at the time.
"But they only shot him in the leg to force him to surrender. This shows that ABRI members in the field respect human rights," Soeyono said.
Most of the victims were ABRI members from different forces but Soeyono denied foreign media reports that the shooting was the culmination of a rivalry between the Green Berets and Red Berets.
"The speculation is totally unfounded and intended to divide ABRI," he said.
In a related development, the Antara news agency reported from Irian Jaya yesterday that 10 ABRI members and three civilians wounded in the incident have been discharged from the PT Freeport hospital in Tembagapura, 100 kilometers from Timika.
Quoting hospital chief Kunto, Antara said that those seriously wounded have been flown to Jakarta for further treatment and that those who have recovered have "gone back to work as usual."
The report did not mention when the shooting victims were discharged from the Tembagapura hospital. It is also unclear if the four reported dead by Soeyono were among the seriously injured flown to Jakarta. (pan)