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Powerful bursts of hot ash and gravel erupted from a rumbling volcano in western Indonesia early on Monday, sending panicked villagers streaming down the sides of the mountain.

Six new eruptions in the morning sent lava and searing gas tumbling at most 1.5 kilometers down the slopes of Mount Sinabung in North Sumatra province. Volcanic material spewed as high as 2,000 meters into the air a day after authorities had raised the volcano's alert status to the highest level.

About 12,000 people from villages on the mountainside have fled their homes since Sunday,bringing the total of displaced persons to nearly 20,000, officials said on Monday.

Bowo Asa, a senior official at the disaster management and mitigation agency in North Sumatra, told Xinhua News Agency that about 12,000 people living in more than 10 villages had been evacuated since Sunday to government camps, more than 6,000 others fled to the shelters previously.

Thick, gray ash covered villages, farms and trees as far as 70 kilometers north of Mount Sinabung's crater, hitting the towns of Binjai and Langkat.

"Everything turned hot surrounding us," said Jatah Surbakti, a 45-year-old farmer who fled with his wife and four children to a shelter on trucks provided by the local disaster agency, along with hundreds of other villagers.

No casualties were reported as the status of the volcano was raised from “standby” to "caution".

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