A volcano in southwestern Iceland erupted on Thursday, the meteorological office said, spraying red-hot lava and smoke in its sixth outbreak since December, APA reports citing Reuters.
The total length of the fissure was about 3.9 km (2.42 miles) and had extended by 1.5 km in about 40 minutes, the Icelandic Met Office, which is tasked with monitoring volcanoes, said in a statement.
Livestreams from the volcano on the Reykjanes peninsula showed glowing hot lava shooting up from the ground, their bright-yellow and orange colours set in sharp contrast against the dark night sky.
"The impact is limited to a localized area near the eruption site. It does not present a threat to life and the area nearby was evacuated," Iceland's ministry for foreign affairs said on social media X.
The lava was not flowing towards the nearby Grindavik fishing town, whose nearly 4,000 residents have been mostly evacuated since November, the Met office said.
The eruption took place on the Sundhnukar crater row east of mountain Sylingafell, partly overlapping the other recent outbreaks on the Reykjanes peninsula, in a volcanic system which has no central crater but erupts by opening giant cracks in the ground.