More than 75 people have been slaughtered - some beheaded and their heads carried around - in savage ethnic bloodshed on Indonesia's portion of Borneo island, local officials and media said today.
National police chief Mr Suroyo Bimantoro said the police and army had each sent in an extra battalion and the navy was being called in to handle thousands of refugees.
The official Antara news agency said 20 headless corpses had been found after Sunday's revival of bitter clashes between local Dayaks and immigrant Madurese in Sampit, in Central Kalimantan province.
A local official spokesman Mr Jauhar Pauzni said 55 bodies - all with heads - had been recovered so far but he said the death toll was climbing.
He said around 15,000 Madurese have fled from Sampit, a river port town about 750 km north-east of Jakarta.
Mr Pauzni said there are other people who can not leave because the mobs are isolating the town.
Mr Bimantoro has blamed the unrest - flaring just as embattled President Abdurrahman Wahid flies to the Middle East and Africa for two weeks - on two local officials angry at missing good jobs in a reorganisation after provinces received more autonomy.