PORT MORESBY - A YOUNG woman was stripped naked and burned alive at the stake in Papua New Guinea, possibly because she was accused of being a witch, newspapers reported on Wednesday.

The woman, believed to be between 16 and 20 years of age, was blindfolded, gagged and lashed to a pole on a pyre of tyres and firewood on a garbage dump in Mount Hagen, a witness told the Post-Courier newspaper.

'The girl was stripped naked and could not shout for assistance or resist as she was tightly strapped and her mouth gagged,' said Jessie James, 21, who lives in a settlement near the town in PNG's volatile Highlands region.

He said several men who had arrived with the woman in a truck then poured petrol over her and set the pyre ablaze.

Highlands divisional police commander Simon Kauba told the paper he was appalled by the crime.

'I don't know the right words to describe it but it's barbaric ... can you find the best word to describe such acts which are rampant here?' Mr Kauba said, pledging to track down and prosecute the killers.

The Post-Courier reported that speculation centred on the woman being accused of sorcery, adultery or of passing on HIV/Aids to one of her murderers.

'If it is alleged she was a sorcerer, this is yet one more example of hysteria and superstition running rampant in parts of our country,' the paper said in an editorial.

Reports of women being tortured and killed after being accused of witchcraft in PNG in recent years have been linked to the growing death toll from Aids.

Researchers have reported that sorcery has frequently been blamed for the deaths of young people which villagers have seen as otherwise inexplicable.

Less than a hundred years ago some tribes in the rugged South Pacific island nation off the north-eastern tip of Australia had never had contact with the outside world.

In 2006, a United Nations report said PNG's population of some six million people was facing an Aids catastrophe, accounting for 90 per cent of HIV infections in the Oceania region. -- AFP