Port Moresby: Twelve school girls were abducted from their dormitory and raped by Army men in Papua New Guinea's rugged highlands, the National newspaper said on Friday.
The men overpowered a lone security guard at Onerungka High School on Wednesday and seized the students, police told the newspaper in Port Moresby.
Papua New Guinea, a jungle-clad South Pacific island nation off the north coast of Australia, has one of the highest incidents of rape and sexual assault in the world.
There have been 715 rapes reported in the country so far this year, with 151 cases in the Capital, Port Moresby, and 67 in the Eastern Highlands, according to police statistics.
The girls were taken to some bushes near a bridge and raped, Eastern Highlands police commander Philipo Solala told the newspaper, describing the men as 'animals'.
Police in the Eastern Highlands area, around 400 km northwest of the Capital, were not immediately available for comment.
Some highland villages in Papua New Guinea only encountered Western civilisation in the 1930s.
Most of the 5.4 million people live a rural subsistence life.
HIV-AIDS has found fertile ground in a nation where polygamy is common and rape and sexual violence widespread.
Papua New Guinea has the second highest HIV infection rate in Asia and is on the verge of an African-style epidemic, health officials say.
Comments
0 comment