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CONCERNS OVER ILLEGAL WEAPONS IN THE PACIFIC

There's growing concern across the Pacific over an increased use of guns in crime.

A Pacific Transnational Crime report has in the past identified Tonga and American Samoa as the main centres for the movement of weapons into the greater Pacific region.

But in Papua New Guinea new data reveals more than 60 percent of major crimes now involve guns.

In May, most recently there was a police raid on a village in Samoa with three officers wounded and one person killed.

More widely across Melanesia there have not been any major gun crimes since the end of political crises in Solomons and Bouganville.

Dr Gordon Nanau, a lecturer in politics and international affairs at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji, has told Radio Australia's Pacific Beat that people must work with police to reduce the number of guns in their communities.

"In the past few months there was that incident where police raided a few villages in Samoa, and that resulted in three casualties," he said. "In Tonga in 2010 police recovered around thirty semi-automatic assault rifles in Tongatapu - that's an indication that there are illegal guns in communities."