At least 25 people were killed, including three children, and hundreds injured when Guatemala's Fuego volcano erupted violently. Volcan de Fuego, one of Central America's most active volcanoes, spewed a stream of red hot lava and belched a thick plume of black smoke and ash that rained onto the capital and other regions. The charred bodies of victims lay on the steaming, ashen remnants of a pyroclastic flow as rescuers attended to badly injured victims.
"It's a river of lava that overflowed its banks and affected the Rodeo village. There are injured, burned and dead people," Sergio Cabanas, the general secretary of Guatemala's Conred disaster agency, said on radio. Guatemala's disaster agency said 3,100 people had evacuated nearby communities, and the eruption was affecting an area with a population of about 1.7 million people.
"The toll was 25 dead as of 9pm," the spokesman for Conred said. Officials said nearly 300 people had been injured. Shelters were opened for those forced to flee. "Unfortunately El Rodeo was buried and we haven't been able to reach the La Libertad village because of the lava and maybe there are people that died there too," said Mr Cabanas.
An ash-covered woman said lava poured through corn fields and she feared more had died. "Not everyone escaped, I think they were buried," Consuelo Hernandez told local news outlet Diario de Centroamerica in a video. One British tourist said he felt "fortunate" to have escaped harm after climbing the neighbouring peak the day before . Richard Fitz-Hugh, a backpacker from Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, spoke to the Press Association from ash-covered Antigua, around 11 miles from the erupting volcano.
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