Malaysia today deployed 125 firefighters to battle hundreds of blazes on Indonesia's Sumatra island which last week blanketed the country with choking clouds of smoke and dust.

Fire and rescue department assistant deputy-general Zurkarnian Mohamad Kasim said the contingent left for Riau province aboard three military aircraft.

"They will be in Sumatra for at least a month. It is a tough mission. We will only be fighting the fire from the ground. But we hope Mother Nature will intervene with rain," he told AFP.

Zurkarnian said the firefighters would be equipped with heavy-duty pumps and all-terrain vehicles, but that the task was made more complicated and dangerous by the lack of water in Sumatra.

As frustration mounted last week over Indonesia's inability to douse the blazes, deputy premier Najib Razak urged Jakarta to clear bureaucratic hurdles delaying the dispatch of the firefighters "as soon as possible".

The same team fought fires in Indonesia during the 1997-98 haze crisis which blighted parts of Southeast Asia.

KL clearer

A meteorological department official told AFP that overnight rain and shifting winds had further cleared the air over the capital Kuala Lumpur and surrounding districts which were hit hard by haze last week.

Over the weekend the shifting winds sent the smoke and dust towards northern Malaysia, including the resort islands of Penang and Langkawi, but they cleared Monday as changing conditions pushed the haze even further north.

"We have a clear day in all the states in the peninsula except for Perlis," he said, referring to the northern state which borders Thailand.

Perlis recorded an air pollution index (API) of 83 on Monday, from 132 Sunday which put it into the "unhealthy" range of 100-200.

A department of environment official in Penang, which also houses most of Malaysia's IT industry, said that air quality there had improved sharply, with the API falling to below 100 from 126 on Sunday.

However, the situation worsened on Borneo island where fires are burning in Indonesia's Kalimantan province, affecting Malaysia's neighbouring Sarawak state. The API in the coastal town of Miri shot up to 116 Monday from 52 Sunday.