ROME: The airport at Catania in Sicily, a top Italian tourist destination, reopened late Tuesday afternoon after suspending all flights when an eruption at nearby Mount Etna spewed volcanic ash.
Millions of passengers pass every year through Catania International Airport, which serves the eastern part of Sicily with tourist sites such as Syracuse and Taormina.
“Due to the decrease in volcanic activity, flight operations will resume,” the airport operator wrote on X.
Departures resumed from 6pm (1600gmt), while four arrivals per hour would be allowed from 8pm (1800gmt), it said.
All flights would resume from 10pm (2000gmt), it added.
The airport had suspended all flights earlier Tuesday “due to eruptions and ash emissions.”
That message was posted with a warning image of Mount Etna with the text “high intensity” and “volcanic activity in progress” overlayed.
The National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology said the ash column had reached an altitude of eight kilometers (five miles).
At 3,324 meters (nearly 11,000 feet), Etna is the tallest active volcano in Europe and has erupted frequently in the past 500,000 years.
Catania airport was last closed on July 5 due to an eruption.
Sicily’s Catania airport reopens after Etna eruption
https://arab.news/w7h5z
Sicily’s Catania airport reopens after Etna eruption
- All flights would resume from 10pm
- The airport had suspended all flights earlier Tuesday “due to eruptions and ash emissions“
Zelensky to meet European leaders in Berlin Monday: Germany
BERLIN: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is set to travel to Berlin on Monday and meet European leaders as well as the heads of the EU and NATO, German government spokesman Stefan Kornelius said.
Zelensky will attend a German-Ukrainian business forum and discuss “the status of peace negotiations in Ukraine” with Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Kornelius said on Friday.
“In the evening, numerous European heads of state and government, as well as the leaders of the EU and NATO, will join the talks,” he said in a statement.
Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer will be among the leaders attending the talks in Berlin, a UK government official said.
The meeting will be part of a flurry of diplomacy around a plan to end the conflict in Ukraine originally proposed by US President Donald Trump last month.
Ukrainian officials on Wednesday said they had sent Washington an updated version of the plan, building on Trump’s original 28-point proposal.
