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‘Bomb with ash’: Locals as Ethiopia volcano erupts for first time since Ice Age
Hayli Gubbi volcano in Ethiopia's Afar region left the neighboring village of Afdera covered in dust.
Residents living near the long-dormant Hayli Gubbi volcano in northern Ethiopia recounted the moment it erupted on Sunday morning after 12,000 years of dormancy. The volcanic explosion, which they described as a “shock wave,” sent clouds of ash across the Red Sea toward Yemen and Oman.
Follow live updates on the volcanic eruption here.
The Hayli Gubbi volcano in Ethiopia's Afar region left the neighbouring village of Afdera covered in dust.
“It felt like a sudden bomb had been thrown, with smoke and ash,” news agency AP quoted Ahmed Abdela, a resident of the Afar region, as saying. He added that the village near the Danakil desert, a tourist attraction, was still covered in ash on Monday, and tourists and guides heading to the desert were stranded there.
Videos shared on social media showed a thick column of white smoke rising from the site of the eruption.
HT.com could not independently verify the authenticity of the videos.
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The Smithsonian Institution's Global Volcanism Program told news agency AFP that Hayli Gubbi has had no known eruptions during the Holocene, which began around 12,000 years ago at the end of the last Ice Age.
Simon Carn, a volcanologist and professor at the Michigan Technological University, was also quoted as saying that Hayli Gubbi "has no record of Holocene eruptions".
Flight operations disrupted
As the clouds of ash from the volcanic eruption in Ethiopia reached India, flight operators such as Indian airlines Air India and Akasa Air said on Tuesday they were cancelling some flights
Air India reportedly cancelled 11 flights on Monday and Tuesday to make precautionary checks on aircraft that had flown over some locations after the eruption, following a directive to airlines from India's aviation regulator.
Akasa Air said it had halted flights with Middle East destinations such as Jeddah, Kuwait, and Abu Dhabi scheduled during the two days.
(With inputs from agencies)
