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Police in Papua New Guinea have unearthed a ‘cannibal cult’ in the jungle thought to be responsible for the murders of seven suspected witch doctors.

The 29 cult members allegedly ate their victims' brains raw and made soup from their penises, according to police officials.

Madang Police Commander Anthony Wagambie said: “They don’t think they’ve done anything wrong; they admit what they’ve done openly.”

Wagambie said the suspected killers believed their victims practiced “sanguma”, or sorcery, and had allegedly been extorting money and demanding sex from poverty-stricken villagers for supernatural services.

The cult members are thought to have eaten the witch doctors’ organs in the belief that they would attain supernatural powers and become ‘bulletproof’.

Wagambie said he believes there could be between 700 and 1,000 cult members in several villages in Papua New Guinea’s remote northeast interior.

All of them might have eaten human flesh, he said.

(Image: Getty)

According to a report in The National, which is published in Papua New Guinea, 28 men and women appeared in a Madang court on Tuesday.

Wagambie said they were charged with willful murder.

It was not clear what happened to the 29th suspect. Murder is punishable by death in Papua New Guinea, a poor South Pacific island nation.

Wagambie said the suspects were not required to plea to the murder charges and were being held in custody.

Police will gather more witness statements before pressing charges related to the cannibalism allegations, he said.

Cannibalism was part of traditional culture in Papua New Guinea, where human flesh was known as "long pig," and survived in isolated pockets into the latter part of the 20th century while the country was under Australian colonial rule.

Wagambie, 36, said he had never heard of a previous case of cannibalism in his lifetime.

He expected police would make around 100 arrests over the weekend for cult-related crimes.

Four of the seven victims were murdered last week, Wagambie said, adding that no remains had been recovered.

"They're probably all eaten up," he said.