glowing lava flows and dramatic rose-coloured plume of ashes above the snow-capped summit of Europe’s most active volcano. Italian authorities have confirmed no danger for the three villages at the foot of the volcano – Linguaglossa, Fornazzo and Milo. Nevertheless, with small stones and ashes raining down, authorities decided to close Catania’s international airport.
“We’ve seen worse,” the head of the INGV National Institute for Geophysics and Volcanology in the nearby city of Catania, Stefano Branca, told Italian news agency AGI.
At 3,324 metres (nearly 11,000 feet), Etna is the tallest active volcano in Europe and has erupted frequently in the past 500,000 years.
