Two people were killed when their houses collapsed due to the eruption of Mount Kelud volcano in East Java province, Indonesia on February 13.

Kelud volcano started erupting at 22:50 (local time), forcing more than 100,000 others to evacuate, many domestic and international flights to redirect and three international airports to close, said Umar Rosadi, a volcanologist at the Indonesia ’s National Volcanology Agency.

Earlier, the country’s Centre for Volcanology and Geological Disaster Mitigation raised the alert status of the volcano to the highest level, sending people living on its slopes into panic.

The 1,731-metre Kelud volcano has claimed more than 15,000 lives since 1500 after 25 times of eruptions.

It is one of the 130 active volcanoes in Indonesia , which sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire, a belt of seismic activity running around the basin of the Pacific Ocean .

In another development, heavy smoke from forest fires in Riau has polluted not only its surrounding islands like Sumatra and Kalimantan but also Malaysia and Singapore.-VNA