“Some were burned, some were hacked to death... some were trapped in fires,” local military commander Chandra Dianto said. “[We’re] going to scour the debris to look for more possible victims in shops and stalls that were set on fire.”

Of the casualties, 28 were in Wamena, a city in the Papua mountain region. Four others were killed in the provincial capital Jayapura.

Papua police spokesman Ahmad Musthofa Kamal said on Tuesday that 12 bodies were found in and around the burned-out wreckage of buildings engulfed in the fires set by rioters, and that the number of dead is expected to rise as authorities search through affected areas in Wamena.

“Of the total ... 22 are migrants, non-Papuans, including motorbike taxi drivers and other workers,” National Police Chief Tito Karnavian told reporters.

The clashes also left 72 people injured, and dozens of vehicles, houses and government buildings were torched in the day-long rioting. Video circulated on the internet showed dozens of people, many armed with machetes, standing in front of their shops and homes to protect them from the angry mob.

Joko Harjani, an airport official, said the protest forced authorities to close the city’s airport until the situation returns to normal.

The protest came days after Indonesian authorities managed to get the province under control after weeks of violent demonstrations by thousands of people in Papua and West Papua provinces against alleged racism toward Papuans. At least one Indonesian soldier and four civilians were killed in that violence.

The previous protests were triggered by videos circulated on the internet showing security forces calling Papuan university students “monkeys” and “dogs” in East Java’s Surabaya city when they stormed a dormitory where Papuan students were staying after a torn Indonesian flag was found in a sewer.

Racism, rage and rising calls for freedom in Indonesia’s Papua

The resource-rich Papua region was rocked by separatist protests last month, forcing authorities to deploy additional troops to quell the violence that targeted government buildings and the army. The region is home to Grasberg copper and gold mine, operated by Freeport-McMoRan and the Tangguh LNG project run by BP.

Located in the western half of the island of New Guinea, Papua became part of Indonesia following a controversial UN-backed referendum in 1969. Decades of conflict between separatists and the government ensued, with the latter standing accused of repeated human rights abuses, rampant deforestation and the exploitation of natural resources.

The violence-hit cities were calm on Tuesday and efforts were on to start a dialogue with protesters, according to National Police spokesman Dedi Prasetyo. Authorities have restricted mobile data services in Wamena regency to prevent the spread of hoaxes, the communications ministry said.

Operations at PT Freeport Indonesia’s massive Grasberg copper and gold mine were unaffected by protests and riots, company spokesman Riza Pratama said.

Indonesia’s Papua burns as protests against alleged police abuse turn violent

The latest clashes are an attempt to provoke the Indonesian security forces and draw the attention of the UN General Assembly to the unrest, President Joko Widodo’s chief of staff Moeldoko said in a statement. He appealed to the police and army to show restraint.

Widodo has spent billions of dollars on new infrastructure in an effort to cultivate warmer relations with secessionist factions that have long pursued independence from Indonesia. But the relative lull in violence was broken with the detention and racial abuse of 43 Papuan students in Surabaya for alleged desecration of Indonesia’s national flag during the independence day.

Additional reporting by Associated Press, Agence France-Presse