Armed police ordered villagers on the slopes of Mount Kelud in East Java to flee their homes Thursday as one of Indonesia's deadliest volcanoes was threatening to erupt, DPA quoted officials and local media reports as saying. Officials in the nearby district of Kediri ordered the evacuation after tremors from within the 1,731-metre volcano began dramatically increasing Thursday morning. "Yes, we have been ordered today to evacuate people living in the danger zones. The evacuation is now still underway for residents living in danger zone areas," said Dedi, an official from the government's emergency response team in Kediri, about 600 kilometres south-east of Jakarta. Dedi quoted scientists as saying that between 6 am (2300 GMT) and 12 pm Thursday, as many as 570 tremors were recorded inside the volcano, a sharp increase compared to the 16 recorded during the same period on Wednesday.
