At least 26 men were massacred in a major escalation of tribal violence in Papua New Guinea, Australian media reported on Monday.
A tribe, their allies and mercenaries were on their way to attack a neighbouring tribe when they were ambushed on Sunday in Enga province in the South Pacific nation’s remote highlands, Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary Acting Superintendent George Kakas told Australian Broadcasting Corp.
Kakas initially said 53 had died. But security forces later revised the death toll down to 26, ABC reported. It was not immediately clear whether any of the ambushers might be among the dead.
Bodies were collected from the battlefield, roads and the riverside, then loaded onto police trucks and taken to the hospital. Kakas said authorities were still counting “those who were shot, injured and ran off into the bushes”.
Kakas said it could be the highest death toll from such violence in the highlands, where there are few roads and most of the inhabitants are subsistence farmers.
Police in the capital of Port Moresby did not immediately respond to requests for information on the massacre.
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Papua New Guinea is a diverse, developing nation of 10 million people with 800 languages in a strategically important part of the South Pacific.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said his government was ready to assist Papua New Guinea, which is Australia’s nearest neighbour and the largest single recipient of Australian foreign aid.
“That is very disturbing the news that has come out of Papua New Guinea,” Albanese said. “We remain available to provide whatever support we can in a practical way, of course, to help our friends in PNG.”
Albanese said Australia was already providing “considerable support” for Papua New Guinea and was helping train the country’s police officers.
Tribal violence in the Enga region has intensified since elections in 2022 that maintained Prime Minister James Marape’s administration.
Elections and accompanying allegations of cheating and process anomalies have always triggered violence throughout the country.
Tribal violence is something that happens commonly, but never to this scale
Enga Governor Peter Ipatas said there were warnings that tribal fighting was about to erupt.
“From a provincial perspective, we knew this fight was going to be on and we [alerted] the security forces last week to make sure they took appropriate action to ensure this didn’t occur,” Ipatas told ABC.
Ipatas described the violence as a “very, very sad occasion for us in the province and it’s a bad thing for the country.”
Scores of people have died in tribal fighting in the Enga region in the past year.
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Port Moresby’s Post-Courier newspaper has reported that high-powered firearms used in the recent fighting made it risky for police to enter the battlefields.
Police said they were assisted by the military in protecting the general public and government property.
Papua New Guinea government lawyer Oliver Nobetau expected more lives would be lost in retaliation for the massacre.
“There’s a big concern that this will continue on. Revenge killings tend to be a normal thing that happens,” said Nobetau, who is on temporary assignment to the Sydney-based international policy think tank Lowy Institute. “Tribal violence is something that happens commonly, but never to this scale,” Nobetau added.
His comments related to the higher death toll, but he later said they still applied to the revised toll of 26.
Police had limited resources to deal with such violence on a “massive scale”, Nobetau said.
“Tribal violence is something that is prevalent and the government with its limited resources will try to deploy the police wherever they can to try to curb the security issues,” he said.