Image: Police evacuate a villager from inside the exclusion zone due to the eruption of Mount Agung volcano in Karangasem, Bali, Indonesia, November 28, 2017. REUTERS/Johannes P. Christo
AMED, Indonesia (Reuters) – Indonesia shut its airport on Bali for a third consecutive day on Wednesday due to a volcanic ash cloud, as the rumbling Mount Agung volcano continued to paralyze flights on the holiday island and cause a mass evacuation around the mountain.
A large plume of white and gray ash and smoke was visible above Agung after rain lashed the island by night and partially obscured the fiery glow at its peak seen in previous days.
Authorities have been continually assessing the risk the ash poses to flying after winds sent the cloud southwest across the island.
Bali’s airport, Indonesia’s second-biggest, will be shut at least until 7 a.m. on Thursday (2300 GMT), the transport ministry said.
As many as 443 flights, both domestic and international, have been affected by the closure of the airport, about 60 km (37 miles) from Mount Agung.
Agung towers over eastern Bali to a height of just over 3,000 meters (9,800 feet). Its last major eruption in 1963 killed more than 1,000 people and razed several villages.
(Reporting by Kanupriya Kapoor and Cindy Silviana in JAKARTA; Writing by Ed Davies; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
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