A forestry ministry official admitted that forest and ground fires had destroyed millions of hectares of land in Indonesia last month, with a satellite system detecting 52,599 hotspots during August.

"All those many hotspots caused 8,476 hectares of forests to burn," Koes Saparjadi, an assistant to the forestry minister, said at a conference in central Java Friday.

He added that around 60 percent of the burnt land was farming land, and the remainder was forest.

Illegal burn-offs caused more damage to Indonesia's environment than rampant illegal logging said Saparjadi.

"This destruction of the forests is much worse than illegal logging. Because the fires cause several species of plants to be annihilated," he said.

Separately in Palangkaraya, the provincial capital of Central Kalimantan on Indonesian Borneo, around 60 firefighters were struggling to put out blazes, said an official.

"The fires are vast, every day they spread further," said Ahmad Yani, a coordinator of the teams tackling the infernos.

Elsewhere dozens of firefighters were trying to extinguish fires in several districts, including ground fires in the Pulang Pisau area which Yani said had been burning since last week ago.

Haze from the fires in Central Kalimantan reduced visibility to less than 500 metres, threatening to interrupt air traffic, said an official from the Palangkaraya's meteorological agency.

"Now visibility is down to 500 metres, planes can still take off but we will have to see later," said the official called Hidayat.

Burning to clear land for crops, a common practice in Indonesia and some parts of Malaysia, causes an annual haze that smothers parts of Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand as well as Indonesia itself.

Indonesia's neighbours have urged Jakarta to prevent the forest clearing burn-offs, warning that it is hurting business and putting off tourists.

The Indonesian government has outlawed land-clearing by fire but weak enforcement means the ban is largely ignored.

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