Indonesian authorities said Thursday they were evacuating thousands of residents from an island in the east of the archipelago due to the eruption of a volcano.
Mount Ibu, located on the remote island of Halmahera in northern Maluku province, erupted on Wednesday, sending a column of smoke four kilometers high into the sky.
Indonesia’s geological agency issued an alert at its highest level, leading local authorities to call on the 3,000 residents living nearby to evacuate.
As of Thursday morning, 517 residents of the village closest to the volcano have already been evacuated, while the other residents were expected to follow in the afternoon.
“The evacuation shelters were prepared by the local administration,” said a spokesperson for the local disaster management agency, Irfan Idrus.
According to the observations of an AFP journalist, residents continued their activities in their respective villages at the time when the trucks were preparing the evacuations.
“Of course we have fears and worries, but we are used to eruptions here,” said Rista Tuyu, a 32-year-old resident. ‘But the most important one appeared this week,’ she says, adding that she hopes the volcano will calm down quickly.
Indonesia, a vast archipelago located along the Pacific Ring of Fire, experiences frequent seismic and volcanic activity.
The volcanic activity of Mount Ibu, on an island where some 700,000 inhabitants live, has accelerated since June, after a series of earthquakes. The volcano has erupted nine times since the start of 2025.
Residents living nearby and tourists were urged to avoid a five- to six-kilometer exclusion zone around the volcano’s summit and to wear masks in case of ashfall.
Last November, Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki, a 1,703 meter twin-peaked volcano on the tourist island of Flores, erupted more than a dozen times in a week, killing nine people in the first blast.
/ATS
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