There are reports that over forty people have been killed in two days of communal violence in the Indonesian island of Borneo.

Police in the capital, Jakarta, said that fighting and arson attacks were continuing in Sambas district.

Local officials said that over five hundred houses have been destroyed in the violence and at least two-thousand people have fled the fighting between different ethnic groups.

There has been widespread violence throughout Indonesia in the past year.

More than two-hundred people have been killed in sectarian violence between Christians and Muslims in Ambon Island since January.