New Zealand pilot killed in Indonesia's Papua, rebel gunmen set his helicopter on fire

Jakarta [Indonesia], August 6 (ANI): The rebel Free Papua Organization (OPM) killed a New Zealand national and took hostages from the helicopter he was piloting shortly after it landed in Indonesia's Papua region on Monday, local media reported citing the country's police.
Glen Malcolm Conning (50), a New Zealand national and pilot for PT Intan Angkasa Air Service was shot dead on August 5, according to Indonesian military-national police joint-operation, the Indonesian news agency Ankara reported.
Brigadier General Faizal Ramadhani, a National Police member who heads the joint security peace force, Cartenz Peace Operation Task Force 2024, in a statement said that the separatist armed group also burned the helicopter that landed in Alama, a remote village in Mimika district of Central Papua province.
"There was a hostage-taking and murder carried out by the OPM against Glen Malcolm Conning who was a helicopter pilot PT. Intan Angkasa Air Service," he said in the statement cited by the Ankara news agency.
The helicopter was carrying four passengers, two health workers, a baby and a child, from Moses Kilangin Timika Airport, he said.
The Indonesian armed forces and national police have begun a search for the rebels responsible for killing the New Zealand pilot.
He said that the gunmen released the passengers later.
In February 2023, a Susi Air plane was burned by the OPM in Nduga Regency. The pilot, Captain Philip Mark Merthens, a New Zealand national, was taken hostage. Despite ongoing efforts, his whereabouts remain unknown, the Ankara news agency reported.
According to a report in the CNN, In 2020, seven employees of PT Freeport Indonesia, including a New Zealand miner, Graeme Thomas Wall from Ngaruawahia, were attcked by gunmen in a parking area in Tembagapura mining town. Wall was shot in his chest and died.
Papua was incorporated into Indonesia in 1969 after a UN-sponsored ballot that was widely seen as a sham. Since then, a low-level insurgency has simmered in the mineral-rich region, which is divided into six provinces, CNN said. (ANI)