They recover the lifeless bodies of four other soldiers after an attack at the hands of rebels in Indonesia

20 Apr. (EUROPE PRESS) –

The Indonesian Army has reported that it has recovered this Thursday the lifeless bodies of four other soldiers who died in an attack at the hands of separatist rebels when they were preparing to carry out an operation to rescue the New Zealand pilot Philip Mark Mehrtens, kidnapped since February .

The country’s security forces have indicated that for the moment the whereabouts of a fifth soldier, also a member of a unit of 36 soldiers in charge of carrying out the operation in the province of Papua, is unknown, according to information from the Kompas news agency.

The remains of the military have been transferred to Mimika, about 100 kilometers from Nduga. In total, the death toll rises to ten, while the separatist West Papua National Liberation Army puts the military dead at fifteen.

Indonesian government security forces have been accused for decades of committing human rights abuses in Papua, a region that was incorporated into Indonesia in a UN-administered vote that rights groups and pro-independence activists criticized as a farce. A separatist insurgency has existed in Papua since the 1960s.