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.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
BOMBARDMENT: Moscow sent more than 440 drones and 32 missiles, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, in ‘one of the most terrifying strikes’ on the capital in recent months A nighttime Russian missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine killed at least 15 people and injured 116 while they slept in their homes, local officials said yesterday, with the main barrage centering on the capital, Kyiv. Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko said 14 people were killed and 99 were injured as explosions echoed across the city for hours during the night. The bombardment demolished a nine-story residential building, destroying dozens of apartments. Emergency workers were at the scene to rescue people from under the rubble. Russia flung more than 440 drones and 32 missiles at Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy
Indonesia’s Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki yesterday erupted again with giant ash and smoke plumes after forcing evacuations of villages and flight cancelations, including to and from the resort island of Bali. Several eruptions sent ash up to 5km into the sky on Tuesday evening to yesterday afternoon. An eruption on Tuesday afternoon sent thick, gray clouds 10km into the sky that expanded into a mushroom-shaped ash cloud visible as much as 150km kilometers away. The eruption alert was raised on Tuesday to the highest level and the danger zone where people are recommended to leave was expanded to 8km from the crater. Officers also
RSS