One of the world’s most aggressive volcanoes has stepped up its eruptions in Russia’s far eastern Kamchatka peninsula, local volcanologists said on Thursday.
Volcanic bombs flew as far as 7km away from the irate Karymsky volcano, which had fired 6km plumes of ash and debris into the air, local scientists said.
Karymsky is a young volcano, having been formed only 6 000 years ago, and has been erupting almost non-stop since then, adding about 40m to its 1 536m height since its last major eruption in 1996.
Despite the eruption’s violence, the local populace is fairly safe from the eruption, with the nearby city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky about 100km away from its slopes, scientists noted.
However, major earthquakes accompanying the eruption could prove dangerous, volcanologists added.
Such eruptions are frequent occurrences on the almost-uninhabited Kamchatka where there are 120 volcanoes, 28 of them active. — Sapa-AFP