Published on
04/09/2026 - 13:02 GMT+2
Malaysia declared an emergency in a town in Sarawak state on Borneo Island on Friday after air pollution breached the country's emergency-level threshold linked to fires in neighbouring Indonesia.
The Air Pollutant Index in Serian, a small agricultural town of just under 90,000 near the border of Indonesia's Kalimantan province, surged to 521 on Friday, according to Malaysia's environment department.
Sarawak's much-larger capital, Kuching, also showed a hazardous reading of 311.
