Emerging from Hell

KOMPAS.com - Horror scenes greeted rescuers arriving at villages near Mount Merapi after the Indonesian volcano's worst eruption in a century last night sent the death toll soaring to more than 130.

Searing gas avalanched down the mountainside with a thunderous roar, torching houses and trees and incinerating villagers as they fled. The injured - with clothes, blankets and even mattresses fused to their skin by temperatures reaching 750C - were carried away on stretchers following the first big explosion just before midnight.

Soldiers joined rescue operations in hardest-hit Bronggang, a village nine miles from the crater, pulling at least 78 bodies from homes and streets blanketed by ash up to one-foot deep.

Crumpled roofs, charred carcasses of cattle, and broken chairs - all layered in white soot - dotted the smoldering landscape.

The volcano, in the heart of densely populated Java island, has erupted scores of times, killing more than 1,500 people in the last century alone. But tens of thousands of people live on its rolling slopes, drawn to soil made fertile by molten lava and volcanic debris.

Its latest activity started nearly two weeks ago. After Friday's explosion - said by volcanologists to be the biggest since the 1870s - officials announced by loudspeaker that the mountain's danger zone had been expanded to 12 miles. Previously, villages like Bronggang were still considered to be in the 'safe zone'.

'The heat surrounded us and there was white smoke everywhere,' said Niti Raharjo, 47, who was thrown from his motorbike along with his 19-year-old son while trying to flee.

'I saw people running, screaming in the dark, women so scared they fell unconscious,' he said from a hospital where they were both being treated for burns.

'There was an explosion that sounded like it was from a war... and it got worse, the ash and debris raining down.'

The greatest danger posed by Merapi has always been pyroclastic flows - like those that roared down the southern slopes at speeds of up to 60 miles per hour.