Navy chief to visit Indonesia to deepen maritime ties
Adm. Dinesh K Tripathi, Chief of the Naval Staff (CNS), will embark on a four-day official visit to Indonesia on Sunday.
Indonesia’s Mount Merapi, one of the world’s most active volcanoes, erupted twice on Sunday, sending clouds of grey ash 6,000 metres into the sky, according to the country’s geological agency.
The two eruptions lasted around seven minutes, according to the agency, and prompted local authorities to order residents to stay outside a three-kilometre no-go zone around the rumbling crater near Indonesia’s cultural capital Yogyakarta.
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The agency did not raise the volcano’s alert status after the eruptions, but it advised commercial planes to be cautious in the area.
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A total of 353 people were killed and about 350,000 others were forced to evacuate during its eruption from October to November in 2010.
In 2015, more than a dozen flights were cancelled on Indonesia’s island of Bali due to an ash cloud emitted by a fresh eruption of Mount Agung volcano.
Mt Agung became active in September 2017 and its eruptions have forced operations at Denpasar airport to be halted many times.
Indonesia has more than 17,000 islands and islets — and nearly 130 active volcanoes.
The last major eruption of the volcano took place in 1963 and lasted for nearly a year, killing more than 1,000 people.
The Indonesian archipelago is located on the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire, an area of great seismic and volcanic activity that records thousands of mostly small to moderate tremors every year.
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