Indonesia’s Mount Sinabung ejects hot clouds in new eruption

Indonesia’s Mount Sinabung in North Sumatra province erupted on Thursday, ejecting a stream of hot gas, ash and rock debris three kilometres down its slopes, an official said.

The volcano also spewed columns of ash as high as 1,000 metres into the sky, said Armen Putra, the head of the Sinabung monitoring post.

There were no reports of casualties.

Mount Sinabung has been erupting intermittently for years. In 2016, nine villagers were killed after the volcano ejected searing gas and volcanic materials – known as pyroclastic flow.

Authorities are advising villagers to stay out of an exclusion zone of about 3 to 5 kilometres from the crater.

Elsewhere in the archipelago, the Mount Merapi volcano on central Java island has spewed pyroclastic flows in recent weeks, according to the National Geological Agency.

Merapi is the country’s most active volcano, where more than 340 people were killed and 60,000 others were displaced in its last round of major eruptions in 2010.

Indonesia sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire, an area known for seismic upheavals, and has about 128 active volcanoes.