The alleged ringleader of a gang accused of killing 26 people including 11 children in a remote area of northern Papua New Guinea has surrendered to police.

The Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary said Jerome Malakai is in custody after turning himself in on Monday afternoon. 

The horrific attack, allegedly a revenge killing turned massacre, happened between July 18 and July 20 when about 30 men descended on two villages in the Kanda Circle area in East Sepik province brandishing weapons including guns and knives. 

The country’s national police force confirmed five other alleged members of the gang have also been arrested, reported the ABC. 

Malakai was sought after he allegedly appeared in a video posted online that showed gang members as they hacked off body parts from one dead victim and paraded them around.

It is understood more than 20 members of the gang, including another leader, remain on the loose and are hiding out along the Sepik River.

The dense, swampy area is not easily accessible to police who are using boats to patrol the area and track them down. 

Police allege the attack, which also reportedly involved the rape of women and children, was spearheaded by Malakai in retaliation to the killings of some of his relatives allegedly by a local government councillor in the region. 

PNG’s national police force said Jerome Malakai (pictured) is in custody after he allegedly was a ringleader in the ‘barbaric’ massacre in which 26 people including 11 children were killed 

The villages were burned to the ground by the gang as about 200 residents who weren’t killed fled and sought refuge in nearby towns. 

Superintendent Christopher Tamari said the feud between the groups stretched back years.

‘It’s all political, it’s all family,’ he said.

‘Why innocent children and females? This is uncalled for. This is so barbaric … I don’t have any answer for that, so I’m sorry,’ he told the ABC. 

The United Nations condemned the attack in July. 

‘I am horrified by the shocking eruption of deadly violence in Papua New Guinea, seemingly as the result of a dispute over land and lake ownership and user rights,’ U.N. Human Rights Chief Volker Turk said in a statement. 

Angrumara village was attacked on July 17 when a man and boy were killed, then nearby Tambari village was attacked the following day as most of the villagers slept.

Women and young girls were raped and killed and some male villagers also murdered.

The violent attacks on remote villages at East Sepik in Papua New Guinea’s (PNG) north, in which houses were burned to the ground, has left more than 200 villagers displaced, the national police force said 

Acting East Sepik Provincial Police Commander Senior Inspector James Baugen told the Papua New Guinea Post-Courier that mothers nursing their babies had been decapitated.

‘Some of the bodies left in the night were taken by crocodiles into the swamp. We only saw the place where they were killed. There were heads chopped off,’ Baugen said.

Papua New Guinea has more than 800 Indigenous languages and has been riven by tribal conflicts over land for centuries.

Most of the land belongs to tribes rather than individuals. With no clear borders, territorial disputes never end.

These conflicts have become increasingly lethal in recent decades as combatants move from bows and arrows to assault rifles, and mercenaries are increasingly becoming involved.

Blake Johnson, an analyst at the Australian Security Policy Institute think tank, said while the East Sepik slayings appeared to be a particularly gruesome event, ‘it is not the first instance of mass murder this year’ in Papua New Guinea.

‘Escalation of violence between groups, often leading to retaliatory murder is, at best, culturally accepted and at worst encouraged,’ Johnson said.

Law enforcement officers lack the resources and training to police most of the country, he said.

‘The country is too big, too harsh and too difficult to navigate, and we don’t even know how many people live in these places,’ Johnson said.