  We have observed the Orion Molecular Clouds 2 and 3 (OMC-2 and OMC-3) with
the Chandra X-ray Observatory (CXO). The northern part of OMC-3 is found to be
particularly rich in new X-ray features; four hard X-ray sources are located in
and along the filament of cloud cores. Two sources coincide positionally with
the sub$mm$-$mm$ dust condensations of MMS 2 and 3 or an outflow radio source
VLA 1, which are in a very early phase of star formation. The X-ray spectra of
these sources show an absorption column of (1-3) x 10^23 H cm-2. Assuming a
moderate temperature plasma, the X-ray luminosity in the 0.5-10 keV band is
estimated to be ~10^30 erg s^-1 at a distance of 450 pc. From the large
absorption, positional coincidence and moderate luminosity, we infer that the
hard X-rays are coming from very young stellar objects embedded in the
molecular cloud cores. We found another hard X-ray source near the edge of the
dust filament. The extremely high absorption of 3 x 10^23 H cm^-2 indicates
that the source must be surrounded by dense gas, suggesting that it is either a
YSO in an early accretion phase or a Type II AGN (e.g. a Seyfert 2), although
no counterpart is found at any other wavelength. In contrast to the hard X-ray
sources, soft X-ray sources are found spread around the dust filaments, most of
which are identified with IR sources in the T Tauri phase.
