Mount Etna erupted in smoke and ash in a new eruption this week, but Italian authorities said the volcano, one of the world’s most active, posed no danger to nearby towns.
“We have seen worse,” the head of the INGV National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology in the nearby city of Catania, Stefano Branca, told Italian news agency AGI.
The estimate that the eruption started from the south-eastern crater of Etna late Tuesday afternoon prompted Branca to insist that the latest eruption “is not worrying at all”.
Nevertheless, with small rocks and ash raining, the authorities decided to close Catania International Airport.
The emergency authorities said on Twitter that they were keeping a close eye on the situation in the three villages at the foot of the volcano – Linguaglossa, Fornazzo and Milo.
Images showed a spectacular rose-colored ash plume above the snow-capped crest, but the cloud largely disappeared by evening, while lava flows were still glowing.
At 3,324 meters (nearly 11,000 feet), Etna is the highest active volcano in Europe and has erupted regularly over the past 500,000 years.