Five people have been killed in a volcanic eruption on a tiny island in Indonesia, officials have said.
Mount Rokatenda, on the island of Palue some 2,000km (1,250 miles) east of Jakarta, spewed ash and rocks hundreds of metres into the air.Disaster officials said hot ash covered a nearby beach, leaving three adults and two children dead.
The volcano had been rumbling since late last year, forcing the evacuation of hundreds of people.
A spokesman from Indonesia's volcanology agency said it was not clear what the victims had been doing inside an exclusion zone.
Palue is about 4km wide, and lies a short distance off the north coast of Flores, the main island in East Nusa Tenggara province.
Much of the Indonesian archipelago lies on the Pacific "ring of fire", an area prone to volcanic eruptions and earthquakes.
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