Manhunt for attackers who beheaded schoolgirls
Dozens of Indonesian investigators combed the hills with sniffer dogs today, searching for clues about masked assailants who beheaded three Christian schoolgirls and wounded a fourth.
Religious leades and residents in the tense province of Central Sulawesi said they wanted answers soon.
Authorities worry that Saturday’s attack outside Poso, a town long plagued by Muslim-Christian violence, could spark retaliatory acts just as relations between the two communities are improing.
The region was on high alert today with 1,500 soldiers and police deployed on street corners and at traditional markets, mosques, churches and schools.
Capt. Idham Mahdi, Poso’s chief detective, said it was too early to say who was behind the killings – though suspicion has fallen on Islamic militants seeking to destabilise the region.
Four dozen detectives and forensic experts were trying to re-enact the events leading up to the crime, he said.
Sniffer dogs led them to the rugged hills overlooking the cocoa plantation where the teenage girls were murdered as they headed to their Christian high school, just outside of Poso.
“We believe the perpetrators may have been watching the girls from the hill before they attacked them,” said Mahdi.
Authorities also believe that a backpack found in the shrubbery, empty except for a key chain, may have belonged to the six machete-wielding assailants.
