Honiara — An Australian-led international force began arriving in this South Pacific island nation Thursday to help restore order at the request of a government that said it could not control armed militants and criminals.
The deployment of the 2,000 troops and 300 police is the largest military operation in the tropical region since the Second World War.
A handful of local police and embassy officials greeted the first of 13 Australian C-130 Hercules transport planes at Henderson Airport outside the capital, Honiara, just after dawn.
The parliament of the Solomon Islands unanimously supported the deployment to fight the militants and gangs who have flourished in recent years.
"It was obvious that neither the Parliament nor the executive government was in control of things in this country. We knew we were just going into anarchy," said Joses Tuhanuku, a Solomon Islands lawmaker.
Prime Minister Alan Kemakeza was whisked away from Honiara to an undisclosed location on Tuesday amid reports he was fleeing a possible kidnap attempt. His office issued a statement the next day confirming his departure, but denying he fled to avoid being abducted.
"His departure was not related to any specific threat against him," the statement said.
The calm of the lush tropical nation has been shattered in recent years by ethnic tensions on the neighboring islands of Guadalcanal and Malaita, culminating in a coup in 2000.
A peace deal signed later that year failed to stop the violence in the archipelago, 1,400 miles northeast of Sydney, Australia.
Mr. Tuhanuku said Solomon Islanders overwhelmingly support the intervention force.
"The people just got sick of lawlessness," he said.
A naval troop and helicopter support ship, the HMAS Manoora, which left Australia Monday, also was scheduled arrive early Thursday and begin unloading supplies.
They will be the first foreign troops in the Solomon Islands since U.S. naval forces won a pivotal campaign against Japan in some of the fiercest fighting in the Second World War.
Japanese forces arrived in 1942 to take over the islands as a base to seize Australia and New Zealand. But a massive U.S. fleet arrived, sparking the 6-month-long battle of Guadalcanal in which thousands of soldiers died and hundreds of ships sank around the islands.
