Smoke haze from forest fires in Indonesia blew across nearby Malaysia on Wednesday, as air quality fell to unhealthy levels in at least a dozen areas and visibility dropped sharply in Kuala Lumpur.

The Department of Environment's website said unhealthy air quality was reported across Malaysia's largest state, Sarawak, and at a major urban centre in neighbouring Sabah state, both on Borneo island.

The haze is an annual occurrence caused by land-clearing fires in Indonesia, and sometimes in Malaysia. The fires are typically started by farmers clearing brush for plantations, often in Kalimantan province, the Indonesian part of Borneo.

"There were more than 424 hot spots in satellite images over Kalimantan," an officer at the Meteorological Department told The Associated Press. "There are a few, very few, fire spots in Sarawak, but the bulk of the fires are in Kalimantan, near Sarawak."

Read More: http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2006/10/04/1949201-ap.html