Three killed in fresh violence in Indonesia's Papua

Three people have been killed in Indonesia's restive Papua region with police saying the victims were civilians, while a rebel group that took responsibility said they were undercover intelligence officers.

The clash comes as Indonesian president Joko Widodo on Sunday was to visit the restive region -- wracked by a decades-old independence insurgency -- after months of mass demonstrations and deadly unrest.

Police said rebels killed three motorbike taxi drivers on Friday in Intan Jaya, a central region in Indonesia's easternmost territory.

"Two of them were shot, while the other one was stabbed to death," Papua police spokesman Ahmad Mustofa Kamal told AFP.

The West Papua National Liberation Army claimed responsibility, but said they shot and killed three undercover agents in an exchange of gunfire with Indonesian troops.

Neither the military nor the separatist movement's claims could be independently verified.

Conflicting accounts are common in Papua, a mineral-rich region on the ...