JAKARTA, Oct 29 (Reuters): Three teenage Christian women were beheaded today by two assailants wearing helmets in eastern Indonesia as they walked to school near the Muslim town of Poso, officials said.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono condemned the killings, which he described as "sadist and inhuman crimes", and called an emergency security meeting with his vice-president, as well as military officials and police.
Two men on a motorcycle and armed with machetes attacked the 16-year-old students on the eastern island of Sulawese, a police official in Poso told Reuters.
"The men slashed and chopped off their heads.
One of the students managed to escape and jumped into the bushes in a ravine and the assailants stopped chasing her," said the official who declined to be identified.
Poso, 1,500 km northeast of Jakarta, is in an area where three years of Muslim-Christian clashes have killed 2,000 people until a peace deal was agreed in late 2001.
Although religious fighting has largely subsided, tension is still running high in the region following bombings in the neighbouring Christian town of Tentena which killed 22 people in May.
Security experts have said local Islamic radicals may have been responsible for the bombings in Tentena but police said they had no information on who was responsible for Saturday's attacks.
The official Antara news agency said police were searching the area but so far no one had been detained.
Police said the student who escaped said the attackers wore helmets and carried a two-way radio.
The three headless bodies of the high school students, dressed in brown uniforms, were left at the site of the attack.
Three heads were found at separate locations two hours later by residents.
"One was found about 100 metres away from a church," said police.
The wounded student was treated for cuts to her face at a local hospital.
About 85 per cent of Indonesia's 220 million people are Muslim.
But in some eastern parts, Christian and Muslim populations are about equal.
2.3 million quake-affected people face threat of starvation: WFP ISLAMABAD, Oct 29 (UNI): The World Food Programme (WFP) has said the impact of the devastating October 8 earthquake was much graver inparts of Northwestern Frontier Province (NWFP) and PoK region thanreported earlier.
According to a WFP assessment, carried out in collaboration with Unicef and Oxfam, some 2.3 million victiwould require food to survive through the winter as compared to the earlier estimated one million.
The WFP has appealed for 56 million dollars aid, based on its previous assessment of having to feed 1 million people.
This appeal has now been revised accordingly to feed the victifor up to six months, WFP officials said here today.
The victiwere already very poor and the quake had made them poorer and more vulnerable as they lost all they had, their homes and livelihood.
These people are now desperate and have to be reached in the next three weeks before the onset of winter, according to the assessment report.
The WFP fears that the situation can aggravate because of the poor donor response.
It had earlier warned that a window of hope for survivors was slamming shut.
The massive earthquake on October 8 killed more than 55,000 people and injured another 78,000 besides rendering over 2.5 million people homeless.
Six out of the nine districts in NWFP and PoK affected by the earthquake were already in the 'most food insecure' parts of Pakistan, where people depend on subsistence farming, livestock and wage labour during the lean season.
More than half of rural households surveyed in the quake-affected areas lost all or most of their grain stocks and one fourth of the livestock was killed.
The local economy in these areas has collapsed.
Even if the survivors had money to buy food, supplies are extremely limited.
Large numbers of children were found to be suffering from diarrhoea or respiratory illnesses, suggesting that a rapid increase in cases of acute malnutrition could be imminent.
About 20 per cent of mothers with children under two years old have stopped breastfeeding, either because of illness or inadequate breast milk.
According to the survey, priority should be given to the estimated 200,000 people living in the most-difficult-to-reach areas in Neelum, Jhelum, Kaghan and Naran valleys as well as upper parts of Alai which will soon be cut off by snow for months.
The assessment comprised secondary data and market analyses, more than 40 key interviews and a survey covering 700 households in more than 200 locations.