JAKARTA: Three hikers, including two foreigners, were killed and 10 were missing after a volcano on Indonesia’s eastern Halmahera island erupted on Friday (May 8), spewing an ash cloud into the air, a local police chief said.
“There are three dead, two foreigners and one resident of Ternate” island in east Indonesia, police chief Erlichson Pasaribu of North Halmahera province told Kompas TV.
BBC News Indonesia and Tribun Ternate reported that two victims were from Singapore, although there has been no official confirmation of their nationalities.
A local rescue official earlier told AFP that 20 hikers were reported missing, nine of them from Singapore.
He said all were hikers, even though the area had been closed to visitors since Apr 17 after scientists observed an increase in volcanic activity.
Mount Dukono is currently on the third-highest alert level of Indonesia’s four-tiered alert system.
Since December, the Center for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation (PVMBG) has recommended that tourists and climbers do not come within 4km of the volcano’s Malupang Warirang Crater.
Unlike Indonesia’s more tourist-friendly volcanoes, Mount Dukono sits far from the country’s main travel routes. Reaching it from Jakarta typically involves flights to Ternate, a boat crossing to Halmahera, and a long overland drive to Tobelo in North Halmahera before the trek even begins.
Hikers typically travel through dense forest before reaching barren volcanic terrain coated in ash and sulfur deposits.
