NOUMEA (Pacnews) — A Futuna man died early Monday morning when he was gunned down while driving in an area south of the capital, Noumea.
Thirty-five-year-old Petelo Motufou was traveling to work with four others when he was shot in the back of his head by an unknown gunman.
He managed to drive on to a nearby police post where he was rushed to hospital in an ambulance.
The incident took place near the Ave Maria Catholic mission compound, where the migrant Futuna community live. Reports suggest the incident is related to the ethnic tension between the Futuna community and the local Kanak population from neighboring Saint Louis village.
Motufou is now the first from the minority Futuna community to die in the ethnic conflict that has dragged on for the past seven months. Since the ethnic tension started last December, two Kanak youths have been killed while a French policeman was seriously hurt in crossfire between the two ethnic groups.
The local Kanak population have been increasingly disputed the presence of the Futuna community at adjacent Catholic mission for the past 40 years. They claim the land was given to the church and not to house a foreign community.
Some 20,000 Wallisians from the French territory of Wallis and Futuna, northeast of the Fiji Islands, now live in New Caledonia.
