One victim was stabbed and 17 others died in the Double O nightclub fire that broke out during the violence.
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At least 18 people were killed following clashes between two groups on Monday evening (January 24th) at a nightclub that caught fire in Sorong, a town in West Papua, Indonesia, police said Tuesday, January 25th. January.
One victim was stabbed and 17 others died in the Double O nightclub fire that broke out during the violence, authorities said. “We found 17 bodies at Double O, all on the second floor. We evacuated the bodies to Selebe Solu Hospital”said Sorong Police Health Division Chief Edward Panjaitan.
The police were looking for the cause of the fire on Tuesday which devastated the vast building, now blackened by fire and next to which lie charred cars. “The club burned down from the first floor. We tried to evacuate as many people as possible, but after firefighters put out the fire this morning we found bodies there,” Ary Nyoto Setiawan, Sorong’s police chief, said in a statement.
West Papua has long seen a low-level insurgency, but police said the two ethnic groups involved in the clashes were not Papuans. Police have been deployed in the city to prevent further clashes, an AFP journalist noted.