Mount Etna spewed smoke and ash in another eruption this week, but Italian authorities said the volcano, one of the world’s most active, posed no threat to nearby villages.
“We have seen worse,” Stefano Branca, head of the INGV National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology in the nearby city of Catania, told the Italian AGI news agency.
Branca estimated that the eruption of Etna’s southeastern crater started late Tuesday afternoon and insisted the latest eruption of activity was “not at all disturbing”.
Nevertheless, the authorities decided to close Catania International Airport with the rain of small stones and ashes.
Emergency authorities said on Twitter that they were closely monitoring the situation in the three villages at the base of the volcano – Linguaglossa, Fornazzo and Milo.
Images showed a spectacular pink ash plume above the snow-capped peak, but the cloud had largely disappeared by evening, while the lava flows continued to glow.
At 3,324 meters (nearly 11,000 feet), Mount Etna is the highest active volcano in Europe and has erupted regularly over the past 500,000 years.