More than 33,000 people fleeing Guatemala volcano eruption.

Guatemalan emergency officials say the evacuees are leaving 17 villages around the Volcano of Fire, which sits 10 miles (16km) from the city of Antigua.

The volcano is almost always active at a low level and smoke can often be seen billowing from its crater, but large eruptions are rare.

Seismologists say explosions have also been coming from the 12,346ft-high (3,763m-high) volcano and lava has spewed 2,000ft (600m) down its slopes.

Thick clouds of ash can be seen billowing nearly two miles (3km) into the sky and rumblings were heard for several miles around.

Gustavo Chicna, a volcanologist with the National Institute of Seismology, Vulcanology, Meteorology and Hydrology, said: “A paroxysm of an eruption is taking place, a great volcanic eruption, with strong explosions and columns of ash.”

He added that the cinders spewing from the volcano were settling half an inch thick in many places and that extremely hot gases coming from the volcano, which was wreathed in ash and smoke.

A long-simmering volcano exploded with a series of powerful eruptions outside one of Guatemala’s most famous tourist attractions on Thursday, hurling thick clouds of ash nearly two miles (three kilometers) high, spewing rivers of lava down its flanks and prompting evacuation orders for more than 33,000 people from surrounding communities.

Guatemala’s head of emergency evacuations, Sergio Cabanas, said the evacuees were ordered to leave some 17 villages around the Volcan del Fuego, which sits about six miles southwest (16 kilometers) from the colonial city of Antigua, home to 45,000 people.

The ash was blowing south-southeast and authorities said the tourist center of the country was not currently in danger, although they expected the eruption to last for at least 12 more hours.

Hundreds of cars, trucks and buses, blanketed with charcoal grey cash, sped away from the volcano along the a two-lane paved highway toward Guatemala City. Dozens of people crammed into the backs of trucks.

Thick clouds of ash reduced visibility to less than 10 feet in the area of sugarcane fields surrounding the volcano. The elderly, women and children filled old school buses and ambulances that carried them from the area.

Alejandro Maldonado, the head of Guatemala’s disaster prevention agency, said 1,500 families had been moved out of their homes and taken to temporary housing.

There was a general orange alert, the second-highest level, but a red alert is also in place south and southeast of the mountain, where, Chicna said, “it’s almost in total darkness.”

Teresa Marroquin, disaster co-ordinator for the Guatemalan Red Cross, said the organisation had set up 10 emergency shelters and was sending hygiene kits and water to the affected areas.

“There are lots of respiratory problems and eye problems,” she said.

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