Forest Fire Haze Spreads to Timor-Leste, Schools Close for Three Days

Authorities in Timor-Leste have closed schools across the country for three days from Thursday (15 October), local time, following thick haze carried over from severe forest fires in Indonesia.

In Dili, the capital, residents continued their usual activities beneath a yellowish sky, but most wore masks, AFP reported on Thursday (15 October 2026). The government had advised people to wear them when it announced the school closures the previous day.

Residents welcomed the decision, although they said pollution levels had been much worse earlier in the week.

“Recently, the pollution in Dili has been very bad,” local resident Sonya da Costa Soares, a 30-year-old midwife, told AFP.

“We couldn’t even see the sun; the pollution was so dense,” she said.

Although her child is not yet of school age, Soares said suspending classes was “very important so that children are not put in danger”.

Indonesia regularly experiences forest fires during the dry season, but this year they have become much more severe because of a strong El Niño phenomenon that has intensified drought conditions.

The fires have burned hundreds of thousands of hectares of forest and land in Sumatra, Kalimantan and Papua. The prolonged fires have caused a surge in air pollution in Indonesia as well as in Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines and Timor-Leste.

On Wednesday (14 October), the Timor-Leste government said schools needed to close “to protect the health of students, teachers and other members of the education community, given the current air quality”.

The government urged families to keep children indoors and advised residents to wear masks if they had to go outside.

“It feels as if smoke from the fires has engulfed all of Dili and the mountainous areas. This pollution is very dangerous; it can make us ill,” said another resident, Felicidade Alves dos Santos Martins.