PORT MORESBY, Papua New Guinea (AP) — A 10-year-old girl was shot dead in the latest violence to mar Papua New Guinea’s general election, a newspaper reported Tuesday.
The killing put the death toll in more than a week of voting at 11. The girl is believed to be the first innocent bystander to die.
Police told Papua New Guinea newspaper The National she was shot Saturday during a fight at a polling booth between supporters of two rival candidates in Chimbu, a remote province in the mountains northwest of the capital, Port Moresby.
Meanwhile in the neighboring Western Highlands province, several polling officials who were kidnapped at gunpoint by candidates and their supporters have been freed.
The men, two of them schoolteachers, were kidnapped by bandits who ordered them to sign ballot papers in an attempt to rig the vote.
The bandits had stolen the ballot papers and ballot boxes the day before when they held up a police patrol. The National did not report when the incident happened.
“They dragged us into the coffee garden and threatened us with bush knives,” one of the men, who was not identified, told The National.
