Australian injured in car-jacking

AN Australian aid adviser in Papua New Guinea has been seriously injured in a violent car-jacking in Port Moresby, The National reports.

A spokesperson for the Australian High Commission confirmed the victim, a man in his 50s, worked for Australia’s aid programme.

“An Australian man had his car stolen in a car-jacking on Thursday evening in Port Moresby,” the spokesman said.

“He sustained serious injuries during the assault.”

The man was discharged from a Port Moresby hospital on Friday and flew to Brisbane for further treatment.

The spokesman would not disclose any more details for privacy reasons but said PNG police were investigating.

AAP also understands that at the weekend another Australian official was involved in an unsuccessful car-jacking by a gang of youths.

The attacks occurred in the same time frame as a fierce tribal fight in Port Moresby that left five men dead with scores more admitted to hospital with knife wounds.

The fight erupted at a popular market on Thursday afternoon but retaliation attacks continued until Sunday.

Chief Superintendent Joseph Tondop called for calm in the wake of the “animalistic and barbaric” clashes that included a beheading and several dismembered bodies.

“Port Moresby is a modern city and I can’t understand why people resort to such barbaric acts,” Tondop said.

“It is very dangerous for such ethnic violence to erupt in Port Moresby.

The clash involved two Highlands ethnic groups, the Taris and the Engans, who have a fierce reputation for such clashes in their home regions that often spill over into the capital hundreds of kilometres away.

The Economist magazine regularly ranks Port Moresby as one of the five worst cities in the world to live in because of violent crime, corruption and the absence of basic infrastructure.

In November last year a young group of Australian volunteers travelling in Madang, on PNG’s northeast coast, were car-jacked, tied up and robbed, with one woman raped. – AAP