Australian killed in Papua possibly shot by a sniper: Police

An Australian working for U.S. mining giant Freeport in Timika, Papua, was shot and killed early Saturday, possibly by a sniper, police and company officials said.

The shooting happened near the Grasberg site, one of the world's largest open-pit mines, where two Americans were killed in an ambush in 2002, at around 5:30 a.m. local time. The victim, 29-year-old Drew Nicholas Grant, was a technical expert at the site.

"A shot was fired and a bullet struck a ... vehicle, fatally wounding one employee riding in the back seat," said a statement from PT Freeport, a subsidiary of the U.S.-based Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc., to The Associated Press. "Other passengers were not injured."

Papua police chief Bagus Ekodanto said the victim suffered bullet wounds in the neck and chest. An anti-terror squad was searching for several suspects, he said.

"It was most likely carried out by a sniper," said national police spokesman Nanan Sukarna, noting that three other passengers, two of them foreigners, were unhurt. The fatal shots were fired from distant hills, he said.

The victim was taken to a hospital in Kuala Kencana, a local mining town, where he died as a result of his injuries, he said.

No suspects were detained, but several witnesses had been questioned, Sukarna said.

Grant's body is set to be flown to Australia on Saturday. A Freeport's Airfast Aviation Facility Company airplane is scheduled to fly the body to Jakarta before another flight takes it to Australia.

The site of Saturday's shooting and the airport was inaccessible to local reporters. (dre)