Thousands of Filipinos fled villages near Mount Pinatubo today as workers prepared to breach the volcano’s crater to drain a lake that could unleash mass floods on the area.

An erupting central Philippine volcano could shoot ground-hugging columns of ash and rock again today, authorities warned, as villagers returned to check their mountainside homes.

A simmering volcano erupted spectacularly in the central Philippines today, jetting fountains of lava, spewing car-sized rocks and shaking the ground more than eight miles away.