The Jakarta Post – Police have identified suspects behind the recent beheadings of three schoolgirls in a sectarian violence-plagued area of central Indonesia , local media reports said Friday.

Authorities refused to release the suspects’ names but said the investigation into the beheadings of the teenagers in Poso district, Central Sulawesi province, was moving forward.

“We already have descriptions of the people involved in the case, but we can not yet make them public for fear they will escape,” the provincial police chief, Sr. Comr. Oegroseno, told the state-run news agency, Antara.

“The police will work as hard as possible to arrest the perpetrators and bring them to justice,” he said.

A group of six masked assailants, wielding machetes and wearing black clothes, attacked a group of students last weekend as they were on their way to a Christian high school, beheading three and seriously wounding another.

Two of the severed heads were found near a police post while the third was discovered outside a Christian church in Poso, about 1,650 kilometers northwest of Jakarta .

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono condemned the incident, called on local residents to stay calm and ordered police, military and local community leaders to step up security in the religiously divided area amid rumors of possible reprisals by Christians.

Immediately after reports of the decapitations spread, dozens of residents from the nearby Christian-majority Tentena subdistrict gathered to protest outside the region’s police headquarters.

Poso and nearby regions have been wracked by communal clashes between Muslim and Christian communities, leaving more than 1,000 dead in 2000 and 2001. Religious-related violence eased after Muslim and Christian leaders signed a peace accord in late 2001, but sporadic bombings and killings continue.

In late May, two powerful blasts ripped through an open market in the Tentena subdistrict of Poso , killing at least 22 people and injuring more than 70.

Indonesia is the world’s most populous Muslim nation, but Central Sulawesi has roughly equal numbers of Muslims and Christians. (**)