SURABAYA, Indonesia: A volcano on Indonesia’s main island of Java erupted on Wednesday, throwing ash and gas kilometers into the sky and forcing officials to raise the alert status to its highest level.
Mount Semeru in eastern Java, about 310 kilometers west of the tourist hotspot of Bali, erupted at 2:13 p.m. local time (0713 GMT), spewing what are known as pyroclastic flows, Indonesian geological agency head Muhammad Wafid said.
“The public is advised not to engage in activities within an 8 kilometer (5 mile) radius of the crater or peak of Mount Semeru due to the risk of being struck by ejected rocks,” he said in a statement.
The national disaster agency said the plume of ash had risen as far as 13 kilometers (eight miles) into the air.
Its spokesman Abdul Muhari said at least 300 villagers living near the volcano have been evacuated to two temporary shelters. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
The geological agency also said that seismic activity at Mount Semeru remained high.
Authorities at Ngurah Rai airport in Bali said flight schedules were operating as usual so far.
An eruption by Semeru in 2021 killed more than 50 people and damaged more than 5,000 homes, forcing almost 10,000 people to seek refuge.
Indonesia sits on the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” where the meeting of continental plates causes substantial volcanic and seismic activity.
The Southeast Asian archipelago has nearly 130 active volcanoes.
Indonesia raises alert level as volcano near Bali erupts
https://arab.news/mkuup
Indonesia raises alert level as volcano near Bali erupts
- The national disaster agency said the plume of ash had risen as far as 13 kilometers into the air
- Muhari said at least 300 villagers living near the volcano have been evacuated to two temporary shelters
French court slashes jails term for trio over 2020 teacher beheading
- Brahim Chnina, the Moroccan father of a girl who falsely claimed that Paty had asked Muslim students to leave his classroom before showing the caricatures, had his 13-year sentence reduced to 10 years
PARIS, France: A French court on Monday reduced on appeal the jail sentences of three men convicted over the 2020 terrorist beheading of a teacher who showed a class cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
Samuel Paty, 47, was murdered in October 2020 by an 18-year-old radical Islamist of Chechen origin in an act that horrified France.
His attacker, Abdoullakh Anzorov, was killed in a shootout with police.
Two friends of Anzorov, French national Naim Boudaoud and Azim Epsirkhanov, a Russian of Chechen origin, had their sentences of 16 years in prison reduced to six and seven years respectively by a Paris court of appeal.
Both were accused of having driven Anzorov and helping him to procure weapons before the beheading.
Brahim Chnina, the Moroccan father of a girl who falsely claimed that Paty had asked Muslim students to leave his classroom before showing the caricatures, had his 13-year sentence reduced to 10 years.
His daughter, then aged 13, was not actually in the classroom at the time and during the first trial apologized to the teacher’s family.
The court however left the 15-year term for French-Moroccan Islamist activist Abdelhakim Sefrioui untouched.
The quartet were among the seven men and one woman found guilty in 2024 of contributing to the climate of hatred that led to the beheading of the history and geography teacher in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, west of Paris.
Paty, who has become a free-speech icon, used the cartoons as part of an ethics class to discuss freedom of expression laws in France.
