A new volcano erupted on the Reykjanes Peninsula in southwestern Iceland late on Thursday, spewing lava into the air in the sixth eruption to hit the region since December last year, authorities said.
Live video images showed orange lava bursting out of a long fissure, illuminating the billowing smoke rising up into the night sky.
“A volcanic eruption has begun. A fissure has opened east of Sylingarfell,” the Icelandic Meteorological Office said in a statement, adding that the eruption had started at 9:26pm following a series of earthquakes.
Photo: AP
The office initially estimated the length of the fissure at 1.4km, adding in a later statement that it had extended to 3.9km in 40 minutes.
There was still “considerable seismic activity” at the northern end of the fissure more than an hour after the start of the eruption, it added.
An earthquake measuring 4 on the Richter scale was recorded at 10:37pm, the office said.
Photo: AFP / Public Defense Department of the State Police in Iceland
Dozens of people could be seen parked on the side of the main road from the capital, Reykjavik, to Iceland’s Keflavik airport to watch the eruption, a correspondent at the scene said.
Iceland’s national airport and air navigation service provider Isavia said in a statement that “flights to and from Iceland are operating normally despite the ongoing eruption.”
This eruption comes just two months after the end of a previous eruption that lasted more than three weeks.
Sudurnes Chief of Police Ulfar Ludviksson told Icelandic media that an evacuation of the nearby village of Grindavik was going well.
Ludviksson added that 22 or 23 houses in the village were occupied.
Most of Grindavik’s 4,000 residents had evacuated in November last year, prior an eruption the following month, and while residents have since been allowed to return in between eruptions, only a few have opted to stay overnight.
Speaking to Icelandic public broadcaster RUV, Magnus Tumi Gudmundsson, a professor of geophysics at the University of Iceland, said that unlike previous eruptions, there was little activity on the fissure’s southern end — the direction of Grindavik.
“So if this continues as expected, there is no lava flowing near Grindavik. I think we have to consider it good news,” Gudmundsson said.
However, the “night is young and we must continue to monitor this,” she said, adding that in general “it’s a more favorable position than the last time.”
James Watson — the Nobel laureate co-credited with the pivotal discovery of DNA’s double-helix structure, but whose career was later tainted by his repeated racist remarks — has died, his former lab said on Friday. He was 97. The eminent biologist died on Thursday in hospice care on Long Island in New York, announced the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he was based for much of his career. Watson became among the 20th century’s most storied scientists for his 1953 breakthrough discovery of the double helix with researcher partner Francis Crick. Along with Crick and Maurice Wilkins, he shared the
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
IMPASSE: US President Donald Trump pressed to end the filibuster in a sign that he is unlikely to compromise despite Democrat offers for a delayed healthcare vote The US government shutdown stretched into its 40th day yesterday even as senators stayed in Washington for a grueling weekend session hoping to find an end to the funding fight that has disrupted flights nationwide, threatened food assistance for millions of Americans and left federal workers without pay. The US Senate has so far shown few signs of progress over a weekend that could be crucial for the shutdown fight. Republican leaders are hoping to hold votes on a new package of bills that would reopen the government into January while also approving full-year funding for several parts of government, but
TOWERING FIGURE: To Republicans she was emblematic of the excesses of the liberal elite, but lawmakers admired her ability to corral her caucus through difficult votes Nancy Pelosi, a towering figure in US politics, a leading foe of US President Donald Trump and the first woman to serve as US House of Representatives speaker, on Thursday announced that she would step down at the next election. Admired as a master strategist with a no-nonsense leadership style that delivered for her party, the 85-year-old Democrat shepherded historic legislation through the US Congress as she navigated a bitter partisan divide. In later years, she was a fierce adversary of Trump, twice leading his impeachment and stunning Washington in 2020 when she ripped up a copy of his speech to the
RSS