Bali flights cancelled after volcano eruption

At least seven international flights from Indonesia’s resort island Bali have been cancelled, an airport official said on Friday, after a volcano in the archipelago nation’s east erupted, shooting dark ash eight kilometres into the sky and forcing thousands to evacuate.

Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki, a 1,703-metre twin-peaked volcano on the tourist island of Flores, erupted for 11 minutes and nine seconds late on Thursday, authorities said, raising the volcano’s alert status to the highest level.

As of 9:45 am (0145 GMT) on Friday, “seven international flights had been cancelled, six of them are Jetstar flights bound to Australia and one Air Asia flight to Kuala Lumpur,” Bali’s Ngurah Rai International Airport spokesman, Andadina Dyah, said in a statement.

Several other flights — both domestic and international, including to Thailand, Singapore and Australia — have been delayed, it said.

The local government has declared a 14-day emergency and established a command post to coordinate response efforts, the country’s disaster agency spokesman (BNPB), Abdul Muhari, said in a statement on Friday.

Abdul added that more than 4,700 residents have been evacuated as of Friday and called on those remaining to find a safe location.

“The people are asked to remain in safe locations and follow directives from the regional government,” Abdul said.

The local airport in Maumere, on Flores, the closest to the volcano, has not been affected by the ash, according to the transportation ministry.

“The ash column was observed grey to black with thick intensity,” Indonesia’s volcanology agency said in a statement about the eruption, which began at around 11:00 pm on Thursday.

Volcanic ash from the eruption blanketed several nearby villages on Friday. At least two people were injured, including a man whose roof collapsed under volcanic debris, a local official said.

The agency warned residents of the risk of volcanic mudflows due to heavy rainfall.

The long eruption prompted the country’s geological agency to raise the volcano’s alert level to the highest of the four-tiered system.

Authorities imposed an exclusion zone between seven and eight kilometres around the volcano, the agency added.

In November, Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki erupted multiple times, killing nine people, cancelling scores of international flights to the tourist island of Bali and forcing thousands to evacuate.