Gunmen Kill 18, Including Children in Papua New Guinea Attack

Gunmen have massacred as many as 18 people including women and children in a remote village in Papua New Guinea, apparently the latest victims of a tribal feud, and Prime Minister, James Marape vowed on Wednesday to hunt down the killers.

Violence has long ravaged the poor but resource-rich Pacific Ocean nation, but the scale of the latest bloodletting has shocked the country.

"It's a very sad tale," Philip Undialu, Governor of Hela, told Reuters by telephone in the rough central highlands where the attack took place.

Pictures published on Facebook showed the dead from the Monday violence wrapped in cloth and placed on palm leaves by the side of a highway, including several kids.

Undialu said: "The particular killing trigger in the village of Karida, about 630 km (390 miles) northwest of the capital, Port Moresby, was not known, but the violence was the latest outbreak of a conflict that has been going on for years."

"Several weeks ago, those targeted offered shelter to victims of a bout of violence," he said.

“It was retaliation of a previous attack and it was a very sudden attack,” he said. All, 24 people had been killed in the latest phase of violence.

“Both attacks were made in an innocent community where people were not expecting it and all of us are in a state of shock.”

Prime Minister Marape said he was “hunting for” the gunmen.

“In memory of the innocent who continue to die at the hands of gun-toting criminals, your time is up,” Marape said in a post on his official Facebook page.

“Before I had someone else to report to, now I have no one else to report to but the innocent you kill,” he said. “I am not afraid to use strongest measures in law on you ... I am coming for you.”

Marape, who became leader in May, cited a lack of police on the ground as a major problem in a region that has for years grappled with violence, sometimes driven by disputes over the distribution of resource wealth.

Last year, aid workers, bringing relief supplies to the area’s district town of Tari after a big earthquake, were ordered out and the army was sent in to quell tribal disputes, according to Reuters.