Foreign ministry for making foreign travel notifications

Thousands of tourists have been left stranded in the Indonesian Island of Bali due to cancellations or delays of dozens of flights following Sunday’s volcanic eruption of the Mount Agung.

According to the Finnish media, at least 28 flights were cancelled on Sunday.

The Finnish foreign ministry told the news agency STT that a total of 376 Finnish citizens had submitted notifications about travelling to Bali. None of them, however, is believed to have experienced any serious issue.

The ministry has stressed that it is always wise for Finns travelling abroad to make a travel notification.

Xinhua on Tuesday quoted a disaster agency official as saying that the Mount Agung volcano in the Bali resort island of Indonesia had erupted spewing a column of ashes up to the sky.

The Mount Agung located in Karang Asem district, about 70 km from the tourist hub of Kuta, erupted at 17:05 p.m. (local time) and the activity is still going on, a spokesman of the national disaster management agency, Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, told Xinhua in a text message.

However, volcanologists have downgraded the alert level of the volcano to the second highest and narrowed the no-go zone, Sutopo said, adding that they have been monitoring the volcano.

The volcano last erupted in 1963, killing 1,100 people in the island.

The Mount Agung is among the 129 active volcanoes in Indonesia, a vast archipelagic country with 17,500 islands.