At least eight Yemeni soldiers were killed in a volcanic eruption on an island off the country's Red Sea Coast, the government said yesterday.
The volcano erupted late on Sunday, spewing lava hundreds of meters into the air.
Officials said earlier nine soldiers were missing.
"At least eight are regarded as dead now," a government official said.
The eruption occurred on Jabal al-Tair, an island about 130km from Yemen.
Yemen has had a military base on the island since its 1996 conflict with Eritrea over the nearby islands of Hanish and Jabal Zuqar.
Al-Arabiya television quoted witnesses as saying the island was engulfed in fire then disappeared.
"At least 49 soldiers were evacuated from the island," the television said, according to the witnesses.
Yemeni officials were not available to confirm the report.
A Defence Ministry official said the western part of the island had "collapsed" following the eruption.
He said naval ships were searching the surrounding waters for nine missing soldiers who were stationed on the island.
Yemen's Oil Minister Khaled Mahfoudh Bahah said several earthquakes felt on Sunday had triggered the eruption.
"Three earthquakes struck the island around 1127 GMT on Sunday, and were ranging between 4.3 and 4 on the Richter scale," Jamal al-Shalaan, head of the Yemeni Earthquake Center, told the state news agency Saba.
Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who flew to nearby Hudaidah port late on Sunday to observe the situation, told the navy to send rescue teams, Saba said.
The Canadian frigate Toronto was conducting a search and rescue operation at the request of the Yemeni coast guard. The NATO fleet was sailing north towards the Suez Canal at the time of the eruption, the Canadian navy said in a statement.
Navy spokesman Ken Allen told the Canadian Press news agency that lava was spewing hundreds of metres into the air, with volcanic ash also rising 300m.
In an e-mail from Toronto, he said the entire 3km-long island was aglow with lava and pouring into the sea.
There had been considerable seismic activity around the island ahead of the eruption, the Yemeni defense ministry said on its Web site.
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