Sydney, Australia - Two pigs' heads were found at the site of a proposed Islamic school on Sydney's outskirts Wednesday, the school's backers said.
An Australian flag was draped between the two heads, said Jeremy Bingham, spokesman for the Quranic Society.
"Someone has put a couple of stakes in the ground with a pig's head on the top of each stake and an Australian flag inside," Bingham told AFP.
"The police are treating it as a crime scene and making investigations."
Earlier this month about 1,000 people attended a meeting to protest against the proposed school in Camden, in Sydney's far southwest, while a cross was previously found on the grounds.
Members of the Quranic Society were "a bit upset by it, a bit offended by it", Bingham said.
"Obviously you have got a sick individual (behind the act)," he said.
But he said it would make no difference to a planning proposal going through the local council, which the backers expect to be approved early next year. The local council also said it would not affect its decision.
Police said while they supported peaceful protest they would investigate and prosecute any "unlawful and obscene acts".
The state government's Community Relations Commission condemned the latest protest as "a mindless act".
"This insult and display of hatred is not something any fair-minded Australian would approve of," said commission head Stepan Kerkyasharian in a statement.
Muslim leaders condemned the incident, not the first in Sydney.
"It's just quite sad really, we don't need this rubbish in Australia," Australian Federation of Islamic Councils spokesman Haset Sali said.
In 2005 anti-Muslim sentiment boiled over into ugly riots on the Sydney beach of Cronulla, where rioters targeted people of Middle Eastern appearance.
And in 2004, a severed pig's head was similarly impaled in front of a Muslim prayer centre under construction in Sydney's northwest.
Parts of southwestern Sydney are now heavily populated by Middle Eastern migrants, many of them Iraqi Muslims.
The backers of the school, which would cater to about 1,200 pupils, hope it will open in 2009.
The Quranic Society denies it has any links to militant Islamic groups and says it is simply trying to provide a school where the children of group members can get a good education and religious instruction.