JAKARTA - Twenty-four Indonesian workers have died of illness in an Indonesian border town after returning from Malaysia to escape a crackdown and thousands of others are threatened with sickness, health officials said Thursday.

The deaths have occurred since tens of thousands of Indonesians began returning home in late July ahead of tough new Malaysian immigration laws that threatened jail and caning for illegal workers.

Government figures say more than 30,000 Indonesian workers and their families are now estimated to be living in Nunukan on the border with Sabah, many of them in tent cities.

Medical staff say they treat hundreds of others daily for a variety of complaints.

Data shown to AFP by Doctor Ridwan Masrun, the East Kalimantan provincial health chief, shows that from July 29 until Thursday, 24 adults, children and prematurely-born infants died in Nunukan.

The victims succumbed to various illnesses such as severe diarrhoea and bronchial asthma, said Ridwan, who left Nunukan on Aug 15.

Coughs and diarrhoea

Idrus Paturusi, another doctor who left Nunukan on Wednesday, said heavy rain fell during the 10 days he was there.

"Now there are those with coughs, skin irritations and diarrhoea," said Paturusi, dean of the medical faculty at Hasanuddin University in Makassar, South Sulawesi.

"The water is a concern," said Ibnul, of the East Kalimantan information department. He said about 3,000 returnees are threatened with illnesses such as diarrhoea, a figure which Ridwan did not reject.

"They are threatened. They are not yet sick," Ridwan said.

Paturusi told AFP he led a medical assistance team to Nunukan from his campus. "We treated 600 people every day," he said.

Some of the returnees were staying in empty houses, outside shops or with relatives, he said. The local government has now established 10 separate tent cities housing 15,000-20,000 people at a local field, Paturusi said.

Ridwan said Nunukan has no hospital but the local medical staff have been supplemented by doctors from elsewhere in Kalimantan.

A surgeon and an ambulance have been sent to the area, along with medication. More medicine including intravenous fluid is on its way from Jakarta, he said.

More returnees

Paturusi, who plans to return to Nunukan in September, warned that tens of thousands more returnees could arrive in Nunukan.

Ridwan said most of the workers wait in Nunukan for 15 days while they try to get permission to return to Malaysia legally.

More than 300,000 illegal immigrants, most of them Indonesian, left Malaysia for home because of the tough new laws.

Amien Rais, speaker of Indonesia's constitutional assembly, has criticized caning as inhumane.

Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar in turn urged his countrymen on Monday to avoid visiting Indonesia because of anger there at Malaysia's treatment of illegals. AFP