Manila: Authorities moved thousands of villagers from harm's way near the Philippines' most active volcano after it oozed lava and shot plumes of ash, and said they probably will spend a bleak Christmas in an evacuation centre.
State volcanologists raised the alert level on the cone-shaped, 8,070-foot (2,460-metre) Mayon volcano overnight to two steps below eruption after ash explosions and dark orange lava fragments glowing in the dark trickled down the mountain slope.
Nearly 50,000 people live in a five-mile (eight-kilometre) radius around the mountain, and authorities began moving thousands of them in case it erupts, Albay provincial Gov. Joey Salceda said.
"Whatever the volcano does, our target is zero casualty," Salceda told The Associated Press.
Salceda said he decided to cancel a trip to Copenhagen, where he was to attend a U.N. climate conference to discuss his central Albay province's experience with typhoons and other natural disasters.
Salceda said he would appeal for foreign aid to deal with the expected influx of displaced villagers to emergency shelters.
The first of 20 vehicles, including army trucks, were sent to villages to take residents to schools and other temporary housing, provincial emergency management official Jukes Nunez said.
"It's 10 days before Christmas. Most likely people will be in evacuation centres, and if Mayon's activity won't ease down we will not allow them to return to their homes," Nunez said. "It's difficult and sad, especially for children."
Magma had been rising at the volcano over the past two weeks and began to ooze out of its crater Monday night, but it could get worse in coming days, said Renato Solidum, head of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology.
"Now lava is trickling down, but if the ascent of magma is sustained there will be lava flows," Solidum told The AP. "There is also the possibility of an explosion."
Some classes were suspended indefinitely near the danger zone. Officials will find a way to squeeze in classes in school buildings to be used as shelters, Salceda said.
Residents in the central province of Albay are used to moving away from Mayon, which spewed ash last month and prompted the evacuation of some villages.
About 30,000 people were moved when it last erupted in 2006. Typhoon-triggered mudslides near the mountain later that year buried entire villages, killing more than 1,000 people.
Mayon's most violent eruption, in 1814, killed more than 1,200 people and buried a town in mud. A 1993 eruption killed 79 people.
The Philippines lies along the Pacific "Ring of Fire," where volcanic activity and earthquakes are common. About 22 out of 37 volcanoes in the archipelago are active.
