Icelandic emergency teams worked all night to strengthen defensive barriers around the evacuated town of Grindavik, while lava from the fourth volcanic eruption since December - the seventh in three years - on Iceland's Reykjanes peninsula heads towards the town.
The Icelandic Meteorological Office (IMO) said the eruption, which occurred on Saturday evening, opened a fissure in the earth almost 3km long between two mountains.
The lava continued to flow mainly south and southeast at a speed of about one kilometer per hour overnight and may soon reach the ocean, Imo said.
Dikes and defensive barriers were strengthened to prevent lava from destroying the main coastal road.
As of midday on Sunday, scientists said the flows appeared to be slowing slightly, but still posed a danger to infrastructure in and around Grindavik.
“The seismic activity has decreased since the beginning of the eruption,” Pálmi Erlendsson from Imo told broadcaster RÚV.
The Svartsengi power plant, which supplies electricity and water to around 30,000 people on the Reykjanes peninsula, has been evacuated and operated remotely since the first eruption in the region, and dams have been built around it to protect it.
The eruption site is located a few miles northeast of Grindavik, about 30 miles southwest of the Icelandic capital, Reykjavik.
The city's 3,800 inhabitants were evacuated before the first eruption in December and since then just a hundred had returned, leaving their homes during the night.
Many people were evacuated from the nearby BlueLagoon spa, one of Iceland's most popular tourist attractions, RÚV reported.
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