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Police fired warning shots and tear gas to disperse rioters attacking the home of the Solomon Islands prime minister on Friday, in a third day of political violence that prompted the snap deployment of international peacekeepers.
As Australian police and soldiers deployed to secure the port, airport and other critical infrastructure, mobs once again torched buildings and looted the smouldering rubble of shops in the usually sleepy Solomons Island seaside capital of Honiara.
Thousands of people — some brandishing axes and knives — rampaged through the city’s Chinatown, Point Cruz and business districts, according to AFP correspondents on the scene.
“We are living in fear,” resident Josephine Teakeni told AFP.
“At the moment it is very hard… children will be missing out from schools, lots of mothers will be jobless.”
The explosion of violence is partly a result of frustrations at Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare’s government and chronic unemployment made worse by the pandemic.
Also driving the unrest is long-running animosity between residents of the country’s most populous island Malaita and the central government based on Guadalcanal.
Crowds voiced their anger on Friday by setting fire to at least one building near Sogavare’s home, before police fired warning shots to drive the mob back toward the centre of Honiara, AFP reporters witnessed.
In Chinatown, a large warehouse was set alight, causing an explosion that sent scores of people fleeing from the scene in panic.
A tobacco warehouse was also set alight as smoke from previous days fires cast parts of the devastated city of 80,000 people in an acrid haze.
The overrun Royal Solomon Islands Police Force said Friday they had made just two arrests, despite two police stations being among the many buildings burned.
‘Urgent help’
The roughly…
Source : france24
