At least 26 people – most of them children – have been killed in a massacre in Papua New Guinea that saw three villages burnt to the ground, the heads of victims hacked off and some bodies taken by crocodiles.
It is feared the number of dead could rise as the search for the missing continues following the slaughter believed to be the result of a territorial dispute and “sorcery”.
Of the 26 confirmed killed, 16 were children, according to the UN.
More than 200 people fled their homes after they were torched in the attacks in the island nation’s remote East Sepik province earlier this month.
Acting provincial police commander James Baugen told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC): “It was a very terrible thing… when I approached the area, I saw that there were children, men, women.
“They were killed by a group of 30 young men.”
Survivors had taken refuge at a police station, too scared to name the killers, he said.
He added: “Some of the bodies left in the night were taken by crocodiles into the swamp. We only saw the place where they were killed. There were heads chopped off.”
The attackers are in hiding and no arrests have yet been made.
Chris Jensen, country director for aid group World Vision, said: “The trigger seems to be, as it is in most cases in PNG, a combination of a couple of things. But sorcery seems to be one of the triggers along with land ownership.
“An individual will get accused of sorcery and they may be the people who perhaps have some control over some assets or land.”
Volker Turk, the UN commissioner for human rights, said: “I am horrified by the shocking eruption of deadly violence in Papua New Guinea, seemingly as the result of a dispute over land and lake ownership and user rights.”
He added: “This number could rise to over 50 as local authorities search for missing people.
“In addition, more than 200 villagers fled as their homes were torched.”
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East Sepik governor Allan Bird said violence had escalated in the past decade, with the under-resourced police force rarely intervening.
Papua New Guinea has more than 800 indigenous languages and most of the land belongs to tribes rather than individuals.
With no clear borders, territorial disputes persist, with mercenaries increasingly becoming involved.
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Blake Johnson, an analyst at the Australian Security Policy Institute thinktank, said while the East Sepik killings appeared to be a “particularly gruesome event, it is not the first instance of mass murder this year” in Papua New Guinea.
He said: “Escalation of violence between groups, often leading to retaliatory murder is, at best, culturally accepted and at worst encouraged.”
Mr Johnson added: “The country is too big, too harsh and too difficult to navigate, and we don’t even know how many people live in these places.”
Eight people were killed and 30 homes torched in fighting in the Enga province in May, while at least 26 men were killed in an ambush in the same region in February.
