No casualties from eruption

INDONESIA’S deadly volcano erupted yesterday with its biggest blast yet, shooting searing ash miles into the sky and forcing hasty evacuations of people from villages and emergency shelters.

Soldiers loaded men, women and crying children into trucks as rocks and debris hurled in the air and down the mountain’s slopes. No new casualties were reported immediately after the explosion that lasted more than an hour.

“This is an extraordinary eruption, triple from the first,” on October 26, said a state volcanologist.

Tens of thousands of villagers have been evacuated from Mount Merapi, one of the world’s most active volcanoes, since it began erupting, killing 38 people.

The danger zone was widened yesterday from 10 kilometres from the glowing crater to 15km.

The last eruption has raised Merapi’s status to “crisis” condition, said Andi Arief, a special staff at the presidential office dealing with the disaster.