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Lava pours into the sea: footage of the last eruption in 1997
Photo: epa AFP / picture alliance / dpa
The volcano La Soufrière on the Caribbean island of St. Vincent has erupted.
An explosive eruption was registered on the mountain in the north of the island on Friday morning (local time), said the disaster control agency Nemo.
A column of smoke up to eight kilometers high builds up over the volcano.
Ash rain is to be expected.
The first pictures show the column of smoke over the mountain, swaths of smoke also move into the lowlands and darken the sky.
There is a significant risk of a disaster, wrote the civil protection agency Nemo yesterday on Twitter.
A cruise ship is used to bring people to safety.
Subterranean tremors had been detected at the volcano, indicating that magma was moving to the surface of the earth.
The government of the island state of St. Vincent and the Grenadines began evacuating the so-called red zone around the volcano on Thursday.
Around 1,500 people were killed in an eruption at La Soufrière in 1902.
Current volcanic activity began last December, according to Nemo.
sug / dpa