Indonesia's Mount Merapi hurled lava and gas clouds down its slopes yesterday in the volcano's largest eruption since it began heating up two months ago, officials and local media reports said.
The eruption occurred at about 9:05am, reaching a record distance of 5km in the direction of the Gendol River, burning down part of the Kaliadem forest area in the district of Sleman, the state-run news agency, Antara, reported.
Local residents normally graze their livestock each morning near the forest area that was burned, but no casualties were reported.
"It was the biggest [eruption] so far," said Heri, a volcanologist from the nearby monitoring center. "But it's difficult to predict whether Merapi will have a major eruption in the near future."
Thousands of residents living around Mount Merapi continued to be evacuated this week with the volcano's latest signs that an eruption was imminent.
Some 3,000 residents were being evacuated from Magelang district on Wednesday, bringing the number of total evacuees to at least 11,000, most of whom were being moved for the second time after fleeing weeks ago before the volcano first erupted.
The fact that the volcano's activity fluctuates so rapidly has frustrated villagers, many of whom have either refused to leave or returned to their homes after the first large-scale eruption last month.
While authorities were stepping up evacuation efforts in some areas this week, residents from other areas were returning to their homes on the slopes of the volcano, despite warnings from scientists that the threat of a major eruption remains high.
Mount Merapi, which translates as "Mountain of Fire," sits about 45km north of Yogyakarta, a Javanese cultural city that was devastated by last week's quake, which left more than 5,700 people dead and at least 36,000 others wounded.
The volcano's most deadly eruption took place in 1930 when 1,370 people were killed. At least 66 people were killed in the 1994 eruption, mostly by the outpouring of superheated hot ash and other volcanic materials.
Indonesia has the world's highest density of volcanos, with 500 located in the so-called "Ring of Fire," in the 5,000km-wide archipelago nation. Of these, 128 are active.
Authorities said that another major eruption would severely strain ongoing earthquake relief operations in nearby Bantul and Klaten districts. More than a half-million people were displaced in last month's temblor, many living in makeshift shelters with no toilets or running water. Paramedics now deployed in the quake-zone are already stretch thin.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing