Indonesian police say gunmen have attacked a convoy of buses near the world's largest gold mine in Papua province, wounding seven people including one foreigner.
A Papua police spokesman said a convoy of two buses and four other vehicles of the mine operator Freeport was attacked on Sunday morning as it travelled from the Grasberg mine to the town of Timika.
He said those wounded included one US citizen, four policemen, another worker and a child.
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Freeport said in an e-mail statement from its Jakarta office that nine people were hurt in the ambush and three required hospitalisation but did not suffer life-threatening injuries.
The other six were discharged after treatment of minor injuries.
It was not possible to account for the apparent discrepancy in the injury figures.
Freeport said the incident did not affect operations at the mine.
The company declined to comment on whether a US citizen was among those wounded.
The Indonesian police spokesman said the US citizen, whose left eye was hit by shrapnel, and two policemen were flown to the capital Jakarta for treatment.
The attack was the latest in a string of ambushes on the road linking the mine with Timika that have claimed eight lives since July 2009, including an Australian technician.
The mine, run by a subsidiary of the Phoenix, Arizona-based Freeport-McMoRan Copper; Gold Inc, has been repeatedly targeted with arson, roadside bombs and blockades since production began in the impoverished province of Papua in the 1970s.
