Video | First photos of Tonga's capital since volcano eruption released

The first published photographs of Nuku'alofa, the capital of Tonga, since the eruption of the Hunga Tonga Hunga Ha'apai volcano, the strongest in the world for three decades, show a city with many buildings reduced to rubble and covered in ash.

At least three people have died and an unspecified number are injured, according to the official statement, the first to be issued due to the interruption of communications caused by the catastrophe.

One of the fatalities, a 65-year-old woman, was a resident of that island;

another, a 49-year-old man, lived on Nomuka Island.

The third deceased person is a woman of British nationality, dragged by the waters when trying to save her dogs, according to New Zealand media.

In the video that accompanies this news, you can also see the city from space completely covered in ash.

A satellite from the Chinese Ministry of Natural Resources shows a comparison of a snapshot from August 2020 with a photo taken on Tuesday.

The bluish green of the coast and the color of the streets have given way to a gray and sometimes black color that covers the surface of the island like a blanket.

The greatest damage in this archipelago of 105,000 inhabitants seems to have been recorded in the outer islands, where evacuation operations have already begun.

Among them, that of the island of Mango, one of the worst off and where the available information, including a preliminary evaluation of the New Zealand intelligence cited by the digital of that nationality

, indicates that its only locality has been devastated completely.

The Red Cross estimates that some 80,000 people, of the 105,000 inhabitants of the country, have been affected by this natural disaster, and experts do not rule out other incidents of volcanic activity.