A new volcano erupted on the Reykjanes peninsula in southwestern Iceland late on Thursday, spewing hot lava into the air in the sixth eruption to hit the region since December, authorities said.
Live video images showed orange lava bursting out of a long fissure, illuminating the billowing smoke rising up into the night sky.
“An eruption has started on the Sundhnuksgigarod,” the Icelandic Meteorological Office (IMO) said in a statement, adding that the eruption had started at 9:26pm local time (21:26pm GMT) following a series of earthquakes.
The IMO initially estimated the length of the fissure at 1.4 kilometres (0.86 miles), adding in a later statement that it had extended to 3.9 kilometres in 40 minutes.
It said that there was still “considerable seismic activity” at the northern end of the fissure more than an hour after the start of the eruption.