A volcano has erupted in southwestern Iceland for the second time in a year.
The eruption began on Monday afternoon in an uninhabited valley near the Litli-Hrutur mountain, 19 miles from the capital Reykjavik.
“The eruption is small and there is presently no emission of ash to the atmosphere,” the Icelandic Meteorological Office said. Lava is emerging as “a series of fountains” from a 656-feet-long fissure on the slopes of the mountain, it added.
“The lava fissure appears small at first sight,” television reporter Kristjan Unnarsson, who was aboard a helicopter about an hour after the eruption began Monday afternoon, told viewers.
Authorities urged people not to trek to the volcano, saying there may be “dangerously high levels of volcanic gases” close to the eruption.
Images and livestreams by local news outlets MBL and RUV showed lava and smoke spewing from a fissure in the ground on the side of the Fagradalsfjall mountain.
Flights at Reykjavik’s international Keflavik airport were not disrupted.
A 2021 eruption in the same area produced spectacular lava flows for several months. Hundreds of thousands of people flocked to see the sight.
Iceland, which sits above a volcanic hotspot in the North Atlantic, averages an eruption every four to five years.
The most disruptive in recent times was the 2010 eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano, which spewed huge clouds of ash into the atmosphere and led to widespread airspace closures over Europe.
More than 100,000 flights were grounded, stranding millions of international travelers and halting air travel for days because of concerns the ash could damage jet engines.
