Marianne Kearney, Madura – After escaping rampaging Dayak mobs, hiding in the forest for days with her 15-month-old daughter, Ms Biah thought she had survived the most traumatic part of her two-week exodus from Kalimantan.

But when she returned to her uncle's village in Madura, she found that the worst was yet to come.

Last Wednesday night, a thousand-strong mob abducted her ethnic Kalimantan husband in the middle of the night. The next day his head was found on the side of the main road 2 km from her village.

Ms Biah, originally from Madura, says the unknown mob mistakenly thought her husband was Dayak, when in fact he was Banjar, an ethnic Malay group in Kalimantan.

"Thousands of them arrive at the house. I couldn't see if they have weapons. I was just crying and felt frightened," she said.

Ms Biah says neither she nor the other villagers could stop them because they were so enraged and everybody was scared they too would become victims.

Now the widowed Biah, her young baby and 17-year-old son are forced to stay just kilometres from where her husband was killed.

On the same day, according to police, another man was also lynched by a mob. His legs were cut off and his body was dragged through the streets just a few kilometres from this village.

No one really knows whether he was Dayak, but it is easy to see how these reprisal killings might have taken place, and the incidents have terrified the Kalimantan community here.

Madurese refugees in the area insist that both the men were Dayak and they were not killed purely out of revenge but because both had allegedly killed Madurese while in Kalimantan.

In Surabaya and Madura, ethnic Kalimantan students and residents now fear a wave of reprisal killings after rumours spread through Surabaya that all those who had come from Kalimantan would have to return by March 13.

This followed a demand by Madurese leaders that all refugees – ethnic Madurese included – had to be returned to Central Kalimantan because they had a right to be back in their homes.

In Surabaya, dozens of students originally from Central Kalimantan have already returned to the province, and so too have Banjar timber merchants.

Others have tried to convince the Madurese that they too are shocked by the violence and have joined a fund-raising drive by one of the city's major newspapers, which is distributing food, blankets and goods to Madurese refugees.

"I want to make peace in the world especially between the Madurese and Kalimantan people," said student Nur Ihsanty, explaining why she was involved in the donation drive.

Not apparently all Madurese are intent on driving those from Kalimantan back to where they came from.

According to Kalimantan community leader Makmun Hasan, head of the South Kalimantan Association in Surabaya, there have been guarantees from some local Madurese that they will not attack ethnic Kalimantans who remain in East Java.