Mysterious bamboo rafts carrying skeletons have washed up on the shores of Pacific atolls.
The discovery has prompted the Federated States of Micronesia, a small developing island nation in the western Pacific Ocean, to ask the United States for help finding out where they came from.
Five skeletons, including one of a child, have been found on the 13 giant rafts that first began to appear last September, Mr Pius Chotailug, police chief of the Pacific nation, said on Monday.
Speaking from Pohnpei, the largest of the Federation's 607 islands that lie between Papua New Guinea and Guam over an area of 2,500 kilometres, he said it was not known where the rafts came from.
An archaeologist who helped with the investigation of the bones found they were dead for up to two months. Mr Chotailug said an identity card was found in a wallet on one of the rafts. It belonged to an Indonesian man from Bitung in Sulawesi, 1,700 kilometres to the southwest, where Muslims and Christians have been fighting for three years.
The Federated States of Micronesia does not have any forensics specialists and has asked the US Federal Bureau of Investigation to help.