At least two police officers were wounded Wednesday in a skirmish with gunmen near a gold mine operated by an American company in eastern Indonesia, officials said. The firefight followed several days of violence, including three deaths, directed at the mining operations of Freeport-McMoran in Papua, an impoverished, military-controlled province that occupies the western half of New Guinea. It came just after Freeport ordered a group of employees to avoid traveling along a road linking a nearby town and the gold mine. 'Because of the violence, we told a couple of hundred of our workers to stay home this morning,' said Mindo Pangaribuan, a spokesman for Freeport. Mindo said that it was not clear who the gunmen were, and that the authorities had yet to make any arrests in the recent deadly ambushes. Two Freeport workers, an Australian mining expert and an Indonesian security guard, were killed in skirmishes over the weekend; a police officer fleeing from an ambush also died after falling down a ravine. Despite a decade of democratization, the Indonesian government still severely restricts access to Papua, especially for journalists. More than 10,000 troops and police officers, most of them non-Papuan, are stationed in Papua and have been accused by rights advocates of frequently committing human rights abuses against the local population. It is in that environment that Freeport, which is based in Phoenix, operates the world's largest gold mine and employs 20,000 workers. The company has enjoyed close ties to the Indonesian government for four decades. 'To many Papuans, Freeport is a symbol of imperialism,' said Andreas Harsono, who is an analyst for the Human Rights Watch office here in Jakarta and recently completed a report on abuses committed in Papua by Indonesia's special forces. The authorities blamed separatists in the Free Papua Movement for this week's violence. But Papuan officials quoted in the Indonesian news media have denied the accusations, saying the movement lacked the kind of sophisticated weapons used in the ambushes. The Indonesian news outlets have speculated that military or police officials, who are paid by Freeport for protection, may have directed the ambushes to secure their business. 