sorong | At least 18 people were killed following clashes between two groups Monday night at a nightclub that caught fire in Sorong, a town in West Papua, Indonesia, police said on Tuesday.
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 the 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,” Sorong Police Chief Ary Nyoto Setiawan said in a statement.
“The clash broke out last night at 11 p.m. (1300 GMT). This is a conflict that has dragged on since a clash on Saturday,” said the police chief.
West Papua has long seen a low-level insurgency, but police said the two ethnic groups involved in the clashes were not Papuans.
“It actually started with a misunderstanding between two members of different groups,” Mr. Setiawan explained.
“We attempted to mediate by calling their leaders before the clashes last night,” he added.
Police have been deployed in the city to prevent further clashes, an AFP journalist noted.
Sorong, gateway to the coral-rich Raja Ampat Islands, is a booming port city and the provincial capital of West Papua.
It is relatively calm compared to other regions of West Papua, theaters of confrontation between Papuan separatists and Indonesian security forces.