Indonesia wildfire razes nearly 300 homes, nearly 1,000 flee

A wildfire on Indonesia's Sumatra island has destroyed nearly 300 homes and forced nearly 1,000 people to flee a village in Bangka Belitung province, officials said.

Mayor Riza Herdavid said residents first saw the fire approaching on Saturday and tried to extinguish it with portable water pumps. He said the fire kept smouldering under peatland before a shift in the wind drove it toward the settlement.

The local disaster agency said nearly 1,000 people fled the village. Residents described escaping with little or none of their belongings as flames spread through homes made mostly of wood.

Riza said the village was built on former peatland in a protected area that was converted into a housing complex last year.

Indonesia regularly faces wildfires during the dry season. This year, stronger-than-usual fires have been linked to the drought-causing El Nino weather phenomenon and to slash-and-burn land clearing that has changed parts of Sumatra and Borneo.

The fires have caused severe local haze, tens of thousands of respiratory illness cases and air pollution spikes in Singapore and Malaysia. Thick smoke in a province of Borneo has also grounded water-bombing aircraft, according to the disaster agency.

President Prabowo Subianto on Monday ordered the government to mobilise maximum efforts against wildfires that have burned for three months in some places. Cabinet secretary Teddy Indra Wijaya said more than 60,000 personnel had been deployed to fight fires on the ground.