A

uthorities at Sultan Syarif Kasim (SSK) II Airport in Pekanbaru temporarily closed the facility on Friday because of thick haze reducing visibility in the area.

The haze enveloped the runway from 6 a.m. local time, airport duty manager Ibnu Hasan said Friday.

"Visibility is currently only 600 meters," he said, adding that the airport would reopen once visibility increased to 1,000 meters.

Antara, which was quoted by AP, reported that because of the unfavorable conditions, four domestic flights and two international flights previously scheduled to land in Pekanbaru had been postponed or diverted to Polonia Airport in Medan, North Sumatra.

The two international flights were an Air Asia flight to Kuala Lumpur and a Riau Airlines flight to Malaka (Malaysia).

According to the Pekanbaru Meteorological and Geophysics Office, NOAA 18 Satellite detected 44 hotspots in eight districts in Riau.

The districts were Bengkalis (10 hotspots), Pelalawan (9), Indragiri Hilir (6), Rokan Hulu (5), Idnragiri Hulu (5), Rokan Hilir (3), Siak (3) and Dumai city (3).

The United States has offered to assist Indonesia in combating forest fires, and Malaysia has offered aid to organize a course on tackling forest and plantation fires in Riau province in particular.

Forest fires in Indonesia attracted international concern as they release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, adding to global warming, and create haze that crosses borders and impacts neighboring countries such as Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand.

Fires have become more frequent and widespread in recent years, especially in Sumatra and Kalimantan, because of human activity in forested areas. During the El Nino of 1982-83, fires burned about 3.7 million hectares of forests degraded by commercial logging and agriculture in Kalimantan.

Scrub, grassland, cleared forest and rainforest areas are often cleared (using fire) for cash crops like palm oil and rubber plantations.

In Jambi, governor H. Zulkifli Nurdin and other local officials joined fire-fighters to put out fast-spreading forest fires in the province while the thick haze blanketing Riau has forced residents to use masks on a daily basis.

In both provinces, fires were spreading fast in forests and plantations and swampy areas, exporting haze to neighboring countries. The same problem has also emerged in Kalimantan where thousands of hectares of bushland and lowland forests have been affected by fires.