Mount Etna in Sicily has erupted as smoke fills the sky above the Italian island with a red alert in place.<\/p>\n
Catania Airport has also had to suspend flights due to safety fears. Ash reportedly started rising from Etna ar around 7:45am this morning and intensified just before 9am.<\/p>\n
La Sicilia reports: “From 7:45 a.m., ash emissions began from the vent on the upper eastern flank of the Voragine crater, intensifying around 8:45 a.m. until generating an eruptive cloud about 1.5 kilometers high above the volcano’s summit. For safety reasons, incoming flights to Catania-Fontanarossa airport have been suspended, while Ingv models indicate that the ash cloud will move toward the southern and south-southeast sectors in the coming hours.”<\/p>\n
A red alert, which issued when an ash cloud presents a potential hazard to aircraft, is currently in place. Several flights have been diverted and had to land in Palermo instead, due to the volcanic activity.<\/p>\n
Some areas of Catania Airport will be closed until the morning. Aircraft already at the airport will be allowed to depart, but arrivals are suspended.<\/p>\n
MORE UPDATES TO FOLLOW BELOW…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mount Etna in Sicily has erupted as smoke fills the sky above the Italian island with a red…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":676017,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,479,225933,50,51,47,52,48,148656],"class_list":["post-676016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-italy","tag-mount-etna","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-volcanoes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/676016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=676016"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/676016\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/676017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=676016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=676016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=676016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}