Indonesia battles forest fires

Vehicles drive on a bridge over the Siak river in the haze covered city of Pekanbaru, Riau Province on the Indonesian island of Sumatra September 14. 2015.-AFP

JAKARTA: A worsening haze across northern Indonesia, neighbouring Singapore and parts of Malaysia forced some schools to close and airlines to delay flights, while Indonesia ordered a crackdown on lighting fires to clear forested land.

South-East Asia has suffered for years from annual bouts of smog caused by slash-and-burn practices in Indonesia’s Sumatra and Kali­mantan islands, but governments in the region have failed to address the problem.