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Heavy Casualties Reported in Solomons Fighting
Solomon Islands rebel leader Andrew Nori said his Malaita Eagle fighters may have killed 50 to 100 men from a rival militia on Wednesday when they bombarded them from a captured police gunboat, near to the capital Honiara.
"When the patrol boat arrived it fired its 50 calibre guns and from eyewitnesses on the boat there were heavy casualties and the casualties could be between 50 and 100," Nori told Reuters in a telephone interview from Honiara.
The report of the deaths could not immediately be independently verified but another witness said rival militants had counter-attacked and were said to be on the outskirts of the capital.
The South Pacific country, about 1,800 km (1000 miles) northeast of Australia, is suffering the worst violence in its history as an independent state with ethnic groups from the islands of Malaita and Guadalcanal struggling for dominance.
Solomon Islands Broadcasting Corporation radio said a police patrol boat was used by the Malaita militia and some para-military police to "bombard the shoreline around Lunga area, east of Honiara".
Nori's Malaita Eagle Force (MEF) militia took over Honiara on Monday, raiding police armouries, taking over police patrol boats and arresting Prime Minister Bartholomew Ulufa'alu.
The prime minister's office said on Wednesday that Ulufa'alu, himself a Malaitan, would be released from house arrest later in the day, ahead of a parliamentary no-confidence motion next week.
A diplomat in Honiara told Reuters fighting, which began at 6 a.m. on Wednesday (1900 GMT Tuesday), also broke out near the airport outside Honiara, where Malaita Eagles and their rivals the Isatabu Freedom Movement clashed on Tuesday.
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