About 800 Americans and Canadians, mostly women, children and the elderly, were escorted in convoys of buses from assembly points in the city to board special planes to Singapore and Bangkok from a military airport in the small hours of Saturday.

The main international airport was also packed with people awaiting commercial flights to anywhere to escape the menace of anti-government mobs in the capital and several other cities.

Major cities were mostly quiet early on Saturday as the world's fourth largest nation licked its wounds from four days of near anarchy by mobs demanding the resignation of ageing president Suharto, who has ruled for 32 years.

The death toll since mob rule broke out on Tuesday could be as high as 300, according to local media reports.

Newspapers on Saturday reported a possible second majortragedy in a Jakarta shopping mall torched by looters.

They said up to 100 bodies might lie in the smoking ruin. Hundreds of anxious people milled around outside seeking news of missing relatives.

More than 100 people -- most of them looters trapped by the flames they themselves had set -- died in another shopping and entertainment plaza on Thursday.

The riots grew out of Tuesday's shooting by security forces of six student protesters demanding political reform after decades of autocratic rule.

The anger over their deaths found fertile ground among the poor suffering in Indonesia's worst economic crisis in decades. Gleeful looters grabbed anything they could while demanding an 76-year-old Suharto relinquish power.World leaders meeting in Britain joined the clamour.

``Giving the people of Indonesia a real voice in the country's political affairs can make a real contribution to restoring political order and stability based on human rights and the rule of law,'' said president Bill Clinton, distancinghimself from old US ally Suharto.

Clinton was at a summit of the Group of Eight industrialised nations in Birmingham, where Indonesia was high on an agenda already dominated by the year-long Asian economic crisis.

``The need for political reform is widely acknowledged in Indonesia,'' the leaders declared in a joint statement.``We encourage the authorities to respond rapidly by opening a dialogue which addresses the aspirations of the Indonesian people and by introducing the necessary reforms.''

French president Jacques Chirac said Indonesia had to have leadership capable of taking the necessary measures and ``If nothing happened in Indonesia, one could seriously fear the crisis will resume.''Suharto, who cut short a state visit to Egypt to address the crisis at home, showed no sign of giving up yet.

He issued orders to the all-powerful military to contain the unrest, but made no public appearance or statement to calm the fearful nation.

The English-language Jakarta Post newspaper was unequivocalabout what had to be done to restore Indonesia, whose economic crisis has opened up a pandora's box, to sanity.

The mayhem, it said in an editorial, ``is increasing the costs of the eventual and inevitable leadership succession, now seen by most analysts as the only way out.''Foreign diplomats and business people showed their lack of confidence in any effective action soon to restore order by getting out.

Governments rushed to help their nationals.Malaysia ordered two military planes to Jakarta. Finland and Australia -- another longtime Suharto backer now distancing itself from his rule -- joined the emergency airlift. Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong and Britain laid on extra commercial flights.Other countries, including the Philippines, Taiwan and Canada were still debating whether to send planes for their people.