Seventeen people were killed and several injured in Indonesia's easternmost Papua province Sunday when two groups supporting rival politicians clashed, police said. Men armed with arrows, bows and other crude weapons fought outside a local council building in the remote Puncak district, Papuan police spokesman Wachyono said.
The clash erupted after the local election commission refused to register a candidate running for the election for the district chief, scheduled for November, local media reported. Several buildings and houses were vandalised and torched by the rioters, police said.
Police were sending additional personnel to the district to prevent further violence, Wachyono said. Papua, one of Indonesia's poorest provinces, is home to a low-level separatist insurgency.
It became part of Indonesia in 1969 after a United Nations-sponsored referendum that Jakarta was accused of manipulating. The central government restricts visits by foreign journalists to Papua.