Ships find survivors of Yemen eruption
NATO ships pluck 4 alive, 2 dead from Red Sea as volcano spews lava, ash
The Associated Press
Updated: 7:25 a.m. PT Oct 1, 2007
SAN’A, Yemen - NATO ships plucked several survivors and bodies out of the waters of the Red Sea on Monday after a volcanic explosion rocked a tiny Yemeni island, collapsing part of it and covering the rest with lava, officials said.
The eruption began when the volcano exploded Sunday evening on Jabal al-Tair, an oval island about 2 miles across that is unpopulated except for a small Yemeni military base used for naval control of nearby shipping lanes.
The blast caused a landslide that collapsed the western part of the island, the Yemeni news agency SABA reported. Lava and ash continued to spew from the volcano on Monday, covering it with lava, the Yemeni Defense Ministry said.
Yemeni ships evacuated the island base, but officials early Monday reported at least 10 personnel were still missing. A NATO fleet that happened to be passing nearby when the eruption began were helping in the search.
NATO ships rescued four survivors and found the bodies of two dead in the waters, Canadian Navy spokesman Ken Allen, aboard the HMCS Toronto in the area, said. It was not clear whether the victims were killed by the eruption or by drowning.
Twenty-nine Yemeni soldiers were based on the island, Allen said. Yemeni officials would not confirm the number.
A Yemeni military official said the NATO ships found three dead Yemeni soldiers and one survivor. The reason for the discrepancy was not known. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in accordance with military rules.
'Entire island is aglow with lava'
At the time of the initial blast, the passing NATO ships — on their way to the Suez Canal — reported seeing a "catastrophic volcanic eruption" at 7 p.m. local time (1600 GMT) Sunday on the island, about 70 miles off the Yemeni coast, said Allan.
"At this time, the entire island is aglow with lava and magma as it pours down into the sea," Allan said in an e-mail Sunday evening. "The lava is spewing hundreds of feet into the air, with the volcanic ash also (rising) a thousand feet in the air."
Jabal al-Tair — meaning "Bird Mountain" — is one of a number of volcanoes at the southern end of the Red Sea in the narrows between Yemen and Sudan. The island last saw an explosive eruption in 1883, according to the Washington-based Smithsonian Institute's Global Volcanism Program.
Over the past two weeks, the area around the island had seen light earthquakes between magnitude 2-3.6, with three larger ones Sunday afternoon reaching magnitude 4.3, the Yemeni Ministry of Oil and Mineral Resources said, according to SABA. Fishermen and other boats had been warned from approaching the area, it said.
Yemen is a poor tribal Sunni Muslim country at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula.
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