Manila: The Philippine Government evacuated thousands of villagers from around the Southeast Asian country's most active volcano on Monday after warning the rumbling mountain could explode at any time.
Mount Mayon, in the central province of Albay, has been spewing ash and boulders the size of cars since July, pushing a four-storey-high wall of lava more than six kilometres down its southeastern slope.
"This morning we recorded at least six small explosions and this signifies that Mayon is almost ready to burst," said chief of eruption prediction at the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs), Ernesto Corpus.
Phivolcs on Monday raised the alert level to four, its final warning before an eruption.
Disaster officials ordered the evacuation of around 34,000 people to centers outside an eight-kilometre danger zone on the southeast side of the 2,462-metre volcano.
Defense Secretary Avelino Cruz said the evacuation would be completed within hours but warned that police would forcibly remove villagers who refuse to leave.
"If we have to carry them out bodily into the truck and get them out of the zone, the Task Force Mayon will do that," Cruz said at a news conference.
Cruz said volcanologists were looking at extending the danger zone to 10 kilometre, which would mean about 74,000 people would have to flee their homes.
Residents reported seeing Mayon, famed for its near-perfect cone shape, belching cauliflower-like plumes of ash and gases 800 meters high on Monday.
The Government has given 250 million pesos ($4.8 million) to cover the cost of running 34 evacuation centres for villagers.
The Philippines lies on the "Ring of Fire," a belt of volcanoes circling the Pacific Ocean that is also prone to earthquakes.
Mayon, the most active of 22 volcanoes in the country, has erupted around 50 times over the past four centuries.
The most destructive eruption came in 1841 when lava buried a town and killed 1,200 people. The volcano most recently erupted in 2000 and 2001.
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