A rescue operation is underway to locate 20 missing hikers after a deadly volcanic eruption in Indonesia, local officials said Friday.
Three Singaporean nationals were killed when Mount Dukono, on the island of Halmahera in North Maluku province, erupted Friday morning, a search and rescue official on the island said.
A huge column of smoke and ash can be seen rising above the mountain in dramatic video from near the crater recorded by Alex Djangu, an Indonesian mountain guide.
Djangu was guiding two German tourists on Mount Dukono when he felt deep tremors before the eruption, telling CNN it was “very scary.”
“I saw the small rocks and gravel sliding down because of the tremors, then I told my clients we have to run down,” he said.
While Djangu and his group were able to safely evacuate, he said many hikers remained at the crater at the time of the eruption.
“When we were about 100 meters away, I saw two groups of local tourists, one group of nine people already close to the rim and the other were videoing for content.”
“I hope they are still alive” he can be heard saying in the video.
The volcano, he said, is highly active and continued to erupt into Friday afternoon “with supersonic sound.”
“When Mount Dukono does not erupt for several days, people need to be careful because it may be building up very high pressure. And that is what happened today,” he said in the video.
Rescue teams could be seen on the mountain on Friday, and carrying at least one injured person on a stretcher through the forest, in photos from Indonesia’s national search and rescue agency BASARNAS.
Indonesia sits on the “Ring of Fire,” a band around the Pacific Ocean where earthquakes and volcanic activity frequently occur. One of the most seismically active zones on the planet, it stretches from Japan and Indonesia on one side of the Pacific to California and South America on the other.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
