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by awtl » Sun, 30 Oct 2005 10:03 am
Three teenage schoolgirls beheaded in Indonesia
JAKARTA - Three Christian teenage girls were beheaded Saturday, police said, in an assault that marks an escalation of the violence against non-Muslims in Indonesia's Central Sulawesi province.
The three high school students were found with their heads severed early Saturday in the sectarian-divided town of Poso, said provincial police spokesman Rais Adam.
The girls were believed to have been murdered while they walked to school, Adam said.
He said two of the victims' heads were found near a police post while the third was discovered outside a Christian church in Poso.
Muslim extremists have been linked to bombings, shootings and other attacks targeting Christians in the Poso area over the last two years but these appear to be the first recent beheadings.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono strongly condemned the beheadings, a tactic used periodically by insurgents in Muslim southern Thailand.
"I condemn this inhumane murder, whoever the perpetrators are and whatever their motives," the president was quoted as saying by Detikcom online news service.
Another teenage student girl was wounded in the attack, said national police spokesman Ariyanto Budiarjo.
But the girl, who was hacked in her upper chest, told police the killings were carried out by six men clad in black and wearing face masks.
Police earlier detained eight men after they refused to have their car searched at a checkpoint, said Budiarjo, but he would not say whether those men were connected to the killings.
Poso has seen several home-made bomb explosions in the past month which caused minimal damage and no casualties.
In May a pair of bomb attacks killed 22 people at a market in the neighbouring coastal town of Tentena.
Police said the Tentena bombings were the work of Islamic militants with possible links to Jemaah Islamiyah, which authorities say has some ties to Al-Qaeda. Others say the attack was politically motivated.
Authorities have linked JI to numerous deadly bombings elsewhere in Indonesia.
- AFP /ls