Jakarta – Thousands of protesters in Indonesia's Sulawesi province forced a two-hour cut in electricity and telephone services to oppose a visit by Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid.

A campus building was also burnt to the ground during a brawl among hundreds of students of the electrical and civil engineering faculties of the Makassar State University (UNM) on Wednesday and Thursday, officials said.

Demonstrators, many of them students, made their way on motorcycles and in cars to the power station in the provincial capital, Kendari. They forced workers to cut the power supply for two hours.

They turned next to the telecommunications office, where they coerced operators to cut long-distance and international telephone connections.

However, security forces managed to keep the protesters hundreds of metres from the Kendari airport as Mr Abdurrahman arrived on Thursday. The peak of the fighting occurred that day when the Parangtambung campus of UNM's engineering department was gutted by a fire, which started in the early afternoon and took about two hours to put out.

The clash left at least 23 students wounded – two of them in critical condition – after opposing camps used papporo-assembled guns, machetes and crossbows.

According to the university authorities, the brawl was a result of internal disputes among the students. Police said they would take over supervision of the campus until the case was solved.