Tribal violence in Papua New Guinea kills 26 fighters and bystanders | World News – Business standard

At least 26 fighters and an unconfirmed number of bystanders have been killed in a gunfight between warring tribes in Papua New Guinea, police said Monday.

A tribe, their allies and mercenaries were moving to attack a neighboring tribe when they were ambushed on Sunday in Enga province in the South Pacific country’s remote highlands, said Acting Chief Inspector George Kakas of the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary.

Police Commissioner David Manning later described the clash as a shootout between warring tribes. An unconfirmed number of villagers were also killed. Police reinforcements were sent to the scene of the battle, Manning said.

At this point it’s not clear exactly how far along we are in the conflict there, Manning told Australian Broadcasting Corp. procedures for dealing with these types of incidents.

Kakas initially said 53 fighters had been killed. But security forces later reduced the death toll to 26.

Bodies were collected from the battlefield, roads and riverbank, then loaded into police cars and taken to hospital. Authorities were still counting those who were shot, injured and ran into the bushes,” Kakas said.

Papua New Guinea is a diverse country with 10 million mainly subsistence farmers who speak 800 languages. Internal security has become an increasing challenge for the Chinese government as China, the United States and Australia pursue closer security ties with the country in a strategically important part of the South Pacific.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said his government is ready to help Papua New Guinea, Australia’s closest neighbor and the largest recipient of Australian foreign aid.

The news that has come out of Papua New Guinea is very disturbing, the Albanian said before the death toll was adjusted downwards.

We remain available to provide whatever support we can in a practical way, obviously to help our friends in PNG, Albanese added.

Albanese said Australia was already providing significant support to Papua New Guinea and helping to train the country’s police officers.

Tribal violence in the Enga region has increased since the 2022 elections that preserved the government of Prime Minister James Marape. Elections and the associated accusations of cheating and irregularities in the processes have always led to violence across the country.

Enga Governor Peter Ipatas said there were warnings that tribal fighting was about to erupt.

From a provincial perspective, we knew that this battle would continue and we (alerted) the security forces last week to ensure that they took appropriate action to ensure that this did not happen, Ipatas said.

Ipatas described the violence as a “very, very sad event for us in the province and it is a bad thing for the country.

Dozens of people have been killed in tribal fighting in the Enga region in the past year.

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’s government lawyer, Oliver Nobetau, expected more lives would be lost in retaliation for the massacre.

There is great concern that this will continue. Revenge killings are usually the most normal thing in the world, says Nobetau, who has a temporary assignment at the Sydney-based international policy think tank Lowy Institute.

Tribal violence is common, but never on this scale, Nobetau added. His comments were in reference to the higher death toll, but he later said they still applied to the revised death toll of 26.

Police had limited resources to tackle such violence on a large scale, Nobetau said.

Tribal violence is widespread and the government, with its limited resources, will try to deploy police wherever it can to curb security concerns, he said.

First print: February 19, 2024 | 2:35 PM IST