A smoking trail of lava from a volcanic eruption covered hundreds of houses in eastern Congo on Sunday, leaving residents to pick gingerly through the wreckage, though the flow halted just short of the major city of Goma, Reuters reported. Goma was thrown into panic on Saturday evening as Mount Nyiragongo erupted, turning the night sky an eerie red and sending a wall of orange lava downhill towards the lakeside city of about 2 million people. Thousands fled on foot with their belongings, some towards the nearby border with Rwanda. As the sun rose on Sunday a smouldering black gash could be seen on the outskirts of Goma, where the lava had cooled to rubble. At some points it was three storeys high, engulfing even large buildings and sending smoke into the gray morning sky. It was not immediately clear if anyone had died, or how widespread the material damage was.
