6/2/25. Mt Etna in Italy exploded last night. No one has been affected. Tourists were on the mountain at the time, but they appear to be safe. The one side is definitely a tourist attraction.
Italian authorities said a massive eruption on Mount Etna forced tourists to flee the volcano on Monday after superheated gas, ash and rock "several kilometers high" shot into the air above them.
Videos posted on social media showed long lines of people rushing down the mountain away from the eruption, while tour company owners told CNN they had 40 people on the Sicilian volcano when it erupted.
Giuseppe Panfallo, a guide with Go Etna, filmed his tour group gathering with a large ash cloud in the distance.
"We were almost suffocating, looking at the cloud here. We were two steps away and thank goodness we had a responsible guide with us," he said in a video shared with CNN.
"It came suddenly, big smoke, a roar," the Sicilian civil protection agency told CNN, adding that they were contacting everyone to make sure everyone was accounted for. All tourists and hikers on the volcano when it erupted have been safely evacuated, according to the National Institute of Geology and Volcanology.
According to the head of the Sicilian civil protection agency, Salvo Cocina, tourists have been told to avoid the area due to the “potential evolution of the situation”.
The volcano on the Italian island is a popular tourist destination visited by 1.5 million people a year, many of whom travel almost all the way to the summit.
Although Etna is one of the world’s most active volcanoes, it has not erupted on this scale since 2014, according to the observatory.
The observatory added that these eruptions often stop as quickly as they start, although the eruptions continue to increase in intensity and the mountain is spewing lava and fire at a very low rate.
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