The decommissioned Manus Island detention centre has been cleared of all refugees and asylum seekers, the Papua New Guinean police and the Australian government have said.
But up to 60 men have been left without a place to stay, because alternative accommodation is either not ready, or already overfull, official sources on the island have told the Guardian.
On the second day of Operation Helpim Friend, PNG mobile squad officers raided the detention centre using metal batons against refugees and asylum seekers and forcing them on to buses.
Mobile phone footage shot in the centre on Friday morning showed PNG officers threatening and hitting refugees as they dragged men out of the centre.
Further footage shows mobile squad officers throwing rocks at the fences behind which refugees are sheltering, in an apparent attempt to intimidate them. An officer yells at a refugee, “Turn the fucking camera off,” before a rock is thrown at him.
Other pictures show immigration officials manhandling refugees out of the centre. Refugees reported being beaten with sticks, having their phones seized, medicines destroyed, and other property stolen.
More than 300 refugees and asylum seekers – who had been living without running water, electricity, or regular food supplies for three weeks – have been moved to alternative accommodation at Lorengau township.
There were some minor injuries reported in the forced removal.
At a press conference in Brisbane, the Australian immigration minister, Peter Dutton, said that as far as he knew three people were injured: one was dehydrated, one tripped and had grazings, and the third “has an ankle issue which I think relates to an insect bite”.
Asked about the footage, Dutton said he would “like to see [it]” but dismissed “claims made on social media” by arguing that “there are clips taken but a lot of this doesn’t add up to the facts on the ground”.
Two men who collapsed on Thursday, when police first entered the compound, were reported to be safe and recovering.
The effort to physically clear the camp began on Thursday with about 50 refugees and asylum seekers taken from the detention centre to other accommodation on Manus Island – most of which is not yet fully built, without running water, electricity or security fences.
Reports from Manus say there are not enough beds at the new accommodation blocks to house all of the refugees removed from the detention centre. The Sudanese refugee Abdul Aziz Adam told the Guardian dozens of men left at the East Lorengau centre had no place to stay, and nowhere else they could go.
The Iranian refugee Behrouz Boochani said busloads of refugees were left outside the East Lorengau centre and told there was no room for them.
The detention centre, where most of the refugees and asylum seekers have been held for more than four years, was officially closed on 31 October.
The men who remained there resisted being moved because of a series of violent attacks against refugees in Lorengau and because of a lack of services, especially for health, in the new centres.
PNG police said the clearance of the detention centre had been completed without force and that nobody had been handcuffed.
Australia has paid to build the new accommodation centres – known as East Lorengau, West Lorengau and Hillside Haus – and remains legally responsible for the welfare of the men. Australian Border Force maintains a significant presence in PNG, and retains effective control of all offshore operations. The Australian government has earmarked between $150m and $250m to be spent on Manus over the next year.
Earlier, Dutton said the Australian government welcomed the clearance of the former detention centre. He said food, security and medical services were “operational and have been available since 31 October”.
“What is clear is that there has been an organised attempt to provoke trouble and disrupt the new facilities,” Dutton said in a statement.
“The Australian government has been advised that some equipment has been sabotaged at the alternative accommodation centres, including damage to back-up generators. Vandalism has also occurred to water infrastructure.”
Power lines to generators at Hillside Haus were cut, but this was done by PNG landowners unhappy at the imposition of the refugees’ accommodation block on their land.
Local landowners, some armed with machetes, have protested against the centres being built and threatened those inside, PNG government sources have said.
The Australian government’s claims that alternative accommodation units are ready and suitable for habitation have been consistently refuted by independent observers, including the UN.
On Manus last week, the Guardian witnessed construction on the unfinished sites. Videos and photos from within them have been published showing blocked toilets, bathrooms without running water and buildings still under construction.
Refugees and asylum seekers have consistently claimed they are not safe in the new housing in Lorengau, citing frequent violent attacks and a lack of security.
Labor’s immigration spokesman, Shayne Neumann, said the government should immediately accept New Zealand’s standing offer to resettle 150 refugees from Australia’s offshore centres Nauru and Manus annually.
“This out-of-touch prime minister can no longer continue to shirk his responsibility; he must immediately negotiate third-country resettlement options for eligible refugees,” Neumann said.
Labor leader, Bill Shorten, released his response to a petition from 12 former Australians of the Year in which he called for resettlement in third countries “as soon as possible” and described Malcolm Turnbull’s decision to refuse New Zealand’s offer as “perplexing”.
The Greens immigration spokesman, senator Nick McKim, said: “The siege is over but the danger is not. The violence that Peter Dutton has inflicted on his prisoners is a stain on our national conscience.”
On the 10th anniversary of the Rudd government, Turnbull used the issue to attack Labor’s record, attacking Shorten for choosing Kristina Keneally as Labor’s candidate in the Bennelong by-election because she was “a strong advocate for bringing asylum seekers from Manus Island to Australia”.
“Kristina Keneally wants to send a signal to the people smugglers: come on down,” he told a press conference in Canberra.