An official from a religious court in Indonesia has blamed social networking site Facebook for a rise in the number of cases of teenage pregnancies and early marriages in a town in central Java.

Gunung Kidul in Yogyakarta has seen a sharp rise in the number of couples seeking marriage licences in the past two years, Antara reported.

"We've often asked underage couples whether they got acquainted via Facebook and they admitted they did and continued their relationships until the girls became pregnant," said Siti Haryanti, a secretary at the religious court in Gunung Kidul.

"Facebook is easy to access, even in villages, leading to teenage girls getting pregnant out-of-wedlock," she said.

Indonesia has about 35 million Facebook users, making it the second largest Facebook market after the United States, according the US news Web site ww.GlobalPost.com.

Haryanti said this year, 130 underage couples aged between 16 and 19 years had sought marriage licences at the religious court – a 100 percent increase from last year. The legal age for marriage in Indonesia is 16 years for women and 19 years for men.