A HORROR massacre in Papua New Guinea has resulted in the burning of three villages and a brutal murder of at least 26 people.
The death toll is feared to rise as missing corpses of the victims were reportedly taken by crocodiles.
As the terror unleashed on the island’s remote East Sepik province, at least 26 people, including 16 children, have been confirmed dead.
More than 200 people were forced to flee their homes to seek refuge after three villages had been set ablaze in the attack.
Armed with firearms, knives, and axes, the gang attacked in the early hours between July 16 and 18.
The attackers – a group of 30 young men – are on the run and have not been arrested.
More than a week after the tragic event, national police arrived in the region to assist with the investigation.
Cops have already identified majority of the men responsible for the attack, local media reported.
Angoram police Inspector Peter Mandi told the Guardian that the members of the gang named themselves “I don’t care”.
Witnesses to the atrocity have recounted hearing their neighbours’ agonising screams and seeing others speared as they attempted to escape the armed gang on canoes.
One woman told how she floated for hours clutching to a log and trying not to utter a word while the attackers raped and killed people around her.
She told the National Newspaper: “I could hear women wailing in pain, children crying out. I was lucky the men didn’t see me.”
Some victims are said to have been decapitated with “chopped off heads” scattered at the crime scene.
Some corpses had floated down the river and been eaten by crocodiles, while others had been left “rotting” in the village.
Acting provincial police commander James Baugen told the ABC: “It was a very terrible thing. When I approached the area, I saw that there were children, men, women.
“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.”
He added that the survivors sought safety at the police station but were too terrified to name the murderers.
The bloody slaughter is thought to be caused by “territorial dispute” and accusations of sorcery.
Chris Jensen, country director for aid group World Vision, told SkyNews: “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.”
The death toll is expected to rise to over 50 while officials continue to search for missing people.
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.”
In the last ten years, violence has escalated with the underfunded police force rarely stepping in to stop it, according to East Sepik Governor Allan Bird.
He added that there were just 20 police officers for every 100,000 residents in the Angoram region of East Sepik province, where the massacre took place.
More than 800 native languages are spoken in Papua New Guinea, where tribes rather than individual people control the majority of the territory.
Due to the lack of defined borders, territorial conflicts continue, and mercenaries are becoming more and more active.
Blake Johnson, an analyst at the Australian Security Policy Institute, said that the gruesome killings in East Sepik is “not the first instance of mass murder this year” in the country.
He said: “Escalation of violence between groups, often leading to retaliatory murder is, at best, culturally accepted and at worst encouraged.
“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.”
