A volcano in southwestern Iceland erupted on Thursday (August 22), the meteorological office said, spraying red-hot lava and smoke in its sixth outbreak since December, Reuters reports.
The total length of the fissure was about 3.9 km (2.42 miles) and had extended by 1.5 km in about 40 minutes, the Icelandic Met Office, which is tasked with monitoring volcanoes, said in a statement.
Footage filmed from a helicopter of the volcano on the Reykjanes peninsula showed glowing hot lava spewing from the site of the eruption as plumes of smoke rose above it.
The lava was not flowing towards the nearby Grindavik fishing town, whose nearly 4,000 residents have been mostly evacuated since November, the Met office said.
The eruption took place on the Sundhnukar crater row east of mountain Sylingafell, partly overlapping the other recent outbreaks on the Reykjanes peninsula, in a volcanic system which has no central crater but erupts by opening giant cracks in the ground.
