Around 26 people were killed in fighting in the remote highlands of Papua New Guinea, where deadly violence between more than a dozen tribal groups has been escalating, a senior security official said.
The death toll was previously reported at more than 50, but that number was revised by the police, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
“These tribesmen have been killed all over the countryside, all over the bush,” George Kakas, the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary acting superintendent, told the broadcaster. “Police and defense forces have had to go in to do their best to quell the situation at their own risk.” It was unclear from his remarks when the killings had taken place, and the police did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Bodies were found across a field, along roads and near a river, Mr. Kakas said. Video footage and photos shared on social media, whose authenticity could not immediately be confirmed, showed dozens of bodies piled onto the back of an open truck.
The police said as many as 17 tribes were involved in the clashes.
Government estimates suggest that between 9 and 17 million people live in Papua New Guinea, which is mostly rural and larger than California, with roughly 85 percent of the population living outside of urban centers. It is rich with mineral resources but remains impoverished. Culturally, it is extremely diverse; more than 300 tribes are spread across the country and the bordering Indonesian regions of Papua and West Papua, according to Survival, a group that advocates for Indigenous rights. More than 800 languages are spoken in Papua New Guinea.
“From the outside, it will look like they’re one country,” Elizabeth Koppel, a researcher at the Papua New Guinean National Research Institute, said during a panel discussion organized by the United States Institute of Peace about tribal violence in October. “But we really struggle with trying to live with each other, understand each other, given all the different diversities.”
Tensions have for several years been rising in the highlands, including Enga Province, where the recent deaths occurred. “This sort of situation has been just becoming increasingly more severe for many years now,” said Michael Main, a researcher at the Australian National University. He added: “It’s been going on for so long that you have an entire generation that’s growing up deeply, deeply traumatized. This level of violence has become normalized.”
The death toll has been rising in recent years as tribespeople have moved from using traditional bows and arrows to high-powered firearms that are mostly brought in from overseas.
The Papua New Guinean defense force “acknowledges that it’s basically outgunned,” Dr. Main said.
The issues in the highlands date back many years and are highly localized and often very personal, often relating to longstanding grievances over land or politics. That is complicated further by a young population that is undereducated and underemployed, with young people denied an education because they are forced to flee the fighting.
“You’ve got people fighting for economic resources, whether it’s ownership of land on which a development project is located or coffee plantations,” Dr. Kopel said in her remarks last year. She added: “The law doesn’t intervene quickly enough, then people resort to taking the law into their own hands, and sometimes fights are instigated by law enforcement agencies.”
At least 150 people were killed in clashes in 2023, and last year, the authorities put Enga Province on a three-month lockdown to contain the unrest.
Peter Ipatas, Enga’s governor, called on Australia last year to help security forces in Papua New Guinea contain the violence. “We do not have the capacity to fix this,” he told the newspaper The Australian.
Last year, Australia agreed to expand support and training for Papua New Guinea’s police under a security agreement. Speaking to the ABC on Monday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of Australia hinted that more assistance to Papua New Guinea could be forthcoming.
“We remain available to provide whatever support we can in a practical way to help our friends in PNG,” he said.