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BLITAR, Indonesia : Indonesia's Mount Kelut erupted on Saturday, a volcanologist said, causing panic among residents living in the area, but there were no immediate reports of casualties.
Tens of thousands of people have been evacuated from the fertile slopes of the historically deadly volcano, but an unknown number have refused to budge, evading patrolling police and soldiers.
"The first eruption was detected at 4:15 pm (0915 GMT)," Agus Budianto said, adding that this was based on seismic data that indicated continuous, escalating tremors that were too strong to be measured on their instruments.
He cautioned that no visual confirmation of an eruption of lava or ash was possible due to heavy cloud shrouding the peak, located in densely populated East Java and just 90 kilometres (56 miles) from Indonesia's second city of Surabaya.
Metro TV reported that volcanologists' instruments high at the peak had not been damaged, which meant it was unlikely there had been a magmatic eruption.
An AFP correspondent at the scene said some locals reported hearing an explosion before panic broke out, but the explosion could not immediately be confirmed with scientists.
One resident, Yono, was evacuating on his motorcycle with his wife and son, carrying a big bundle.
"We panicked, Kelut has erupted," he said as he rushed downhill.
Another local, Sumarni was also fleeing by bike with her husband and three children.
"My mother is left in our house up there. There was no space on our motorcycle," she said, adding that few trucks had picked up residents in their village.
Television footage showed rushing but calm residents piling into trucks, wearing raincoats amid heavy downpours lashing the slopes, clutching a few belongings.
Mount Kelut has been on high alert for more than two weeks but activity escalated dramatically on Friday, triggering fresh rounds of evacuations carried out by troops and local officials using hundreds of trucks.
On Saturday, some recalcitrant residents were dragged from their homes while others hid in scrub and at a church, the correspondent said.
A policeman guarding road access to a village within the danger zone hours before the eruption told AFP authorities were getting tough "for people's safety... the eruption could kill people."
Many Javanese are highly superstitious and brush off warnings from officials and scientists, preferring to believe their elders and follow traditional lore.
About 130,000 people live within a 10-kilometre (six-mile) danger zone around Mount Kelut, according to the health ministry, but local officials told AFP they were focusing on evacuating about 60,000.
Kelut has a lake in its crater, and another volcanologist, Saut Simatupang, earlier told AFP that it would "take a lot of energy to shift the 2.5 million cubic metres of water in the crater."
Experts expect an eruption of Kelut to consist of "heat clouds" of searing gas and volcanic debris rushing down the slopes, similar to the last eruption in 1990 that left 34 people dead.
Since record-keeping began, Mount Kelut's eruptions have claimed more than 15,000 lives, including an estimated 10,000 in a catastrophic 1586 eruption. A 1919 eruption spewed heat clouds that killed 5,160 people.
Indonesia sits on the so-called Pacific "Ring of Fire," where several continental plates collide, causing frequent seismic and volcanic activity.
The archipelago nation is home to 129 active volcanoes.
- AFP /ls
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