Buka, Papua New Guinea

The city and Buka Island are separated from the northern tip of Bougainville Island by the deep, narrow Buka Passage, which varies in width from 980 to 3,000 feet (300 to 1,070 metres). Both islands are in the northern Solomon Islands archipelago and the only major ones not within the nation of Solomon Islands. Buka Island is volcanic formation measuring 35 miles by 9 miles (56 km by 14 km), with a total land area of 190 square miles (492 km²). The elevation reaches to 1,634 feet (498 metres) in the hills in the southwest, and the interior of the island is densely forested. The city is served by Buka Airport. == History ==

Discovered by Europeans in 1768, the German Empire laid claim to the island in 1899, annexing it into German New Guinea. Buka became the capital of the Bougainville Province decades later, during the 1990s Bougainville Civil War. The former, or "proper" capital of Bougainville, Arawa, was all but destroyed in 1990 as tensions reached a critical level in a civil uprising, which ended with the Bougainville Peace Agreement in 1998. The Bougainville government intends to return the capital to Arawa in the future. == See also ==