The famous Hayli Gubbi volcano in northern Ethiopia has erupted after nearly 12,000 years.
The incident gave rise to massive amounts of ash covering villages nearby while forcing airlines to cancel dozens of international flights.
Villages in the Afdera district of the Afar region were seen covered in ash and which caused residents to cough intensely, while livestock to find their grazing and water resources completely covered as per officials.
Several flights were scheduled to traverse the impacted regions, but ended up getting cancelled as weather experts spoke about massive ash clouds dissipating later on Tuesday. The volcanic activity at Ethiopia’s long inactive Hayli Gubbi eased today, but did end up leaving a huge path of destruction in its wake.
It follows a weekend of eruption that caused havoc in nearby villages and also led to flight cancellations due to ash clouds interfering with high-altitude flight routes.
Air India, which is the country’s national airline, shared more on how it was cancelling flights in the area, and nearly 11 of them ended up being disrupted, causing serious inconvenience to flyers.
The company said it would be carrying out intense inspections to check if its fleet was doing okay after many flights were said to have flown in those areas.