MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) – At least 26 men have been massacred in tribal violence in Papua New Guinea, Australian media reported Monday.
A tribe, its allies and mercenaries were ambushed Sunday while attempting to attack neighboring tribes in the South Pacific country's remote, high-altitude Enga province, said Acting Superintendent George of the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary.・Kakas told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Kakas initially said 53 people had died. However, security forces later revised the death toll downward to 26, ABC reported. It was not immediately clear whether the ambushers were among the dead.
Bodies were collected from battlefields, roads and riversides, loaded onto police trucks and taken to hospitals. Kakas told ABC officials they were still counting “people who were shot, injured and fled into the bushes.”
Police in the capital, Port Moresby, did not immediately respond to The Associated Press' request for information about the massacre.
Papua New Guinea is a diverse developing country in a strategically important region of the South Pacific, made up of 10 million mostly subsistence farmers who speak 800 languages.
Domestic security is becoming an increasing challenge for governments as China, the United States and Australia seek closer security ties.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said his government stands ready to support Papua New Guinea, Australia's closest neighbor and the single largest recipient of Australia's foreign aid.
“The news coming out of Papua New Guinea is very worrying,” Mr Albanese said before the death toll was revised downward.
“We will continue to provide all the support we can in a practical way, and of course to help our friends in Papua New Guinea,” Albanese added.
Mr Albanese said Australia was already providing “substantial support” to Papua New Guinea and was helping train the country's police officers.
Tribal violence in the Enga region has escalated since the 2022 elections that kept Prime Minister James Marape in power. Elections and associated allegations of fraud and process irregularities have always sparked violence across the country.
Enga governor Peter Ipatas said there were warnings that inter-tribal fighting was about to break out.
“From the state's perspective, we know this fight will continue and we (warned) the security forces last week to take appropriate action to prevent something like this from happening,” Ipatas told the ABC. Ta.
Ipatas called the violence “a very sad event for all of us who live in this state and bad for the country.”
Dozens of people have been killed in inter-tribal fighting in the Enga region over the past year.
Port Moresby's Post Courier newspaper reported that it was dangerous for police to enter the battlefield because of the use of high-powered firearms in recent fighting.
Police said they were supported by the military in protecting the public and government property.
Papua New Guinea government lawyer Oliver Novetau predicted more lives would be lost in retaliation for the massacre.
“There's a big concern that this situation is going to continue. Revenge killings tend to be commonplace,” said Novetau, who is currently on temporary assignment at the Lowy Institute, a Sydney-based international policy think tank. said.
“Tribal violence is common, but never on this scale,” Novetau added. His comments were related to the increased death toll, but he later said they also applied to the revised death toll of 26.
Novetau said police had limited resources to deal with such violence “on a large scale.”
“Tribal violence is endemic and governments with limited resources will seek to deploy police wherever possible to curb security issues,” he said.
