The Jakarta Post, 10/29/2005 2:08:26 PM
Three Christian schoolgirls beheaded in C. Sulawesi
JAKARTA (Agencies): Three Christian teenage girls were beheaded Saturday in the
latest attack against non-Muslims in the troubled Indonesian province of Central
Sulawesi, police said.
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 were walking to school,
Adam said.
He said two of the victims' heads were found near a police post while the third was
discovered outside a local Christian church in Poso.
"We are still waiting for results from investigation in the field. We are still trying to
determine whether this case is religiously-motivated or not," he told AFP.
A policewoman on duty in Poso confirmed to AFP that the triple murder had taken
place and that the killings were being investigated.
Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim nation, but Central Sulawesi has a
roughly equal number of Muslims and Christians. The province was the scene of a
bloody sectarian war in 2001-2002 that killed around 1,000 people from both
communities.
A government-mediated truce succeeded in ending the conflict in early 2002, but there
have since been a series of bomb attacks and assassinations of Christians. These
included a blast at a market in Poso, a predominantly Christian town, that killed
22people in May.
Christian leaders have repeatedly accused the authorities in Jakarta of not doing
enough to find the perpetrators and bring them to justice. (**)
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