Daily Times

A new volcano erupted on the Reykjanes peninsula in southwestern Iceland late Thursday, spewing hot lava into the air in the sixth eruption to hit the region since December, authorities said. Live video images showed orange lava bursting out of a long fissure, illuminating the billowing smoke rising up into the night sky. “A volcanic eruption has begun. A fissure has opened east of Sylingarfell,” the Icelandic Meteorological Office (IMO) said in a statement, adding that the eruption had started at 9:26 pm (2126 GMT) following a series of earthquakes. The IMO initially estimated the length of the fissure at 1.4 kilometres (0.86 miles), adding in a later statement that it had extended to 3.9 kilometres in 40 minutes. It said that there was still “considerable seismic activity” at the northern end of the fissure more than an hour after the start of the eruption. A 4.0-magnitude earthquake was recorded at 10:37 pm, according to the IMO. Dozens of people could be seen parked on the side of the main road from the capital Reykjavik to Iceland’s Keflavik airport to watch the eruption, according to an AFP correspondent at the scene.