Papua New Guinea police are hopeful they can recover much of the around one million kina or 375 thousand US dollars, stolen from a bank at the weekend.
The Post Courier newspaper reports that the robbers had held the family of the manager of the Bank of South Pacific branch in Kerema in Gulf province hostage on Friday night, before forcing the staff to open up bank the next day.
There are unconfirmed reports that all of the cash in the bank was taken.
The police spokesman, Dominic Kakas, says they arrested around 20 suspects in a special operation yesterday in Port Moresby, and expect to make further breakthroughs.
"It all depends on how soon we can close in on the members in the operation, I mean in the robbery. We expect that if we can make our arrests pretty soon we might b e able to recover most of the money."
