– The Associated Press

MOUNT MERAPI, Indonesia – A volcanic eruption and a tsunami killed scores of people hundreds of miles apart in Indonesia — spasms from the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” which spawns disasters from deep within the Earth.

Tuesday’s eruption of Mount Merapi killed at least 18 people, forced thousands to flee down its slopes and spewed burning ash and smoke high into the air on the island of Java.

Meanwhile, off the coast of Sumatra, about 800 miles west of the volcano, rescuers battled rough seas to reach Indonesia’s Mentawai islands, where a 10-foot tsunami triggered by an earthquake Monday night swept away hundreds of homes, killing at least 113 villagers, said Mujiharto of the Health Ministry’s crisis center. Up to 500 others are missing.

The twin disasters happened hours apart in one of the most seismically active regions on the planet.

A 2006 eruption at Merapi killed two people, one in 1994 killed 60 people, and a 1930 blast killed 1,300.

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After refusing to budge from the volcano’s fertile slopes, saying they wanted to tend to their crops and protect their homes, villagers started streaming by the thousands into makeshift emergency shelters Tuesday.

Officials said earlier that by closely monitoring the volcano 310 miles southeast of the capital of Jakarta, they thought they could avoid casualties. But the death toll rose quickly.

Even as they contended with the volcano — one of 129 to watch in the world’s largest archipelago — officials were trying to assess the impact of Monday night’s 7.7-magnitude earthquake off Sumatra that triggered the killer tsunami.

The quake, just 13 miles beneath the ocean floor, was followed by at least 14 aftershocks, the largest measuring 6.2, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The fault also caused the 2004 quake and monster Indian Ocean tsunami that killed 230,000 in a dozen countries.

After Monday’s quake and tsunami, many panicked residents fled to high ground and were too afraid to return home.

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That could account in part for the 500 people still missing, said Hendri Dori, a local official.

Hundreds of wooden and bamboo homes were washed away on the island of Pagai, with water flooding crops and roads up to 600 yards inland. In Muntei Baru, a village on Silabu island, 80 percent of the houses were badly damaged.

With few relief workers able to get to the hardest-hit islands — reachable only by a 12-hour boat ride — fishermen searched for the living and dead. Corpses lay unburied because there was not enough outside help to dig graves, said the Mentawai district chief, Edison Salelo Baja.

The island chain, 175 miles from Sumatra, has long been popular with surfers.

Ade Edward, a disaster management agency official, said crews from several ships were still unaccounted for in the Indian Ocean.

The quake also jolted towns along Sumatra’s western coast — including Padang, which last year was hit by a deadly 7.6-magnitude quake that killed more than 700.


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