Forest and ground fires in Indonesia are on the increase, despite government warnings to stop burning swathes of land, officials were quoted as saying Tuesday.
Satellite photos of the region showed 62 fires spots had been detected by late Sunday, compared to 40 on Friday, the Antara news agency said, quoting the National Coordination Center for Ground Fire Control.
The fire spots were detected in Java, Sumatra, Kalimantan (the Indonesian part of Borneo), and in Sulawesi.
Fires have been burning for weeks now despite firefighting efforts and have caused a huge pall of choking smog to hang over areas of Southeast Asia. Some relief was brought after rains last week.
One of the fire spots might have been the burning of at least 35 hectares (86 acres) of a young timber plantation of a private company in Batulicin, South Kalimantan set on fire by a discontented local man.
The plantation of PT Kodeco was burned down by a man who claimed that the land was his and had been unlawfully taken over by the company, the agency said.
Police are investigating, Antara said.
The increase in the number of fires appears to have ignored the government's repeated warnings against fire-starters.
The government has already revoked the timber-use permits of 29 firms which Jakarta blamed for using illegal slash-and-burn techniques to clear large swathes of land. They had failed to prove their innocence.
Indonesia's environmental agency is meanwhile gathering evidence to take legal action against the 29 firms.
The reappearance of the thick haze, which began to ease in several regions earlier this month, has forced the temporary closure of at least four airports on Sumatra and Kalimantan, the Antara news agency said.
However, officials in several cities contacted Tuesday said the returning haze was not as intense as last month.
A commercial flight of the Merpati Nusantara airline from Jakarta Tuesday became the first plane to land at the airport in the past three days, an airport official there said.
The official said the airport was only accessible to air traffic around noon as haze remained thick in the morning and in the afternoon.
``It is still hazy here although it is slightly better than in the previous days,'' said Hendri of the Pekanbaru-based National Firefighting Coordination Centre in Riau province.
Siswadi of the meteorology office here said thick smokes from the forest and ground fires were still hovering over the provinces of Southern Sumatra, Jambi, Bengkulu, West Sumatra and Riau and in the provinces of West, Central and South Kalimantan.
The smoke was also reported to have intensified in Singapore, despite heavy rains there over the weekend.
Rains last week initially appeared to have helped douse the fires which according to some estimates have destroyed up to 800,000 hectares of forests (1.9 million acres).
The downpour aided the efforts of about 1,000 Malaysian firefighters despatched to Indonesia in a bid to dampen the fires and end the haze which brought weeks of misery to its neighbors. In parts of Sarawak, the Malaysian part of Borneo, pollution levels rose to dangerous on several occasions.
The Malaysians, who have been deployed in the three provinces since Sept. 24 to help local efforts in combatting the fires, will be soon be replaced, Kuala Lumpur said Monday without giving details.
Some of the areas hit have been tropical rainforests which sustain one of the most unique ecosystems on the planet.
A local environment official in Palangkaraya, Central Kalimantan, on Monday was quoted by Antara as saying that it could take a quarter of a century for central Borneo to recover as the fires have caused ``immeasurable'' environmental damage to the ecosystem.
Antara said Tuesday that the satellite photos showed 23 fires on Sumatra, 35 in Kalimantan, two in Sulawesi and two in Java.
Six Indonesians have died from haze-related ailments since August and some 40,000 others had had their health affected.