MANILA

One of the Philippines' most active volcanoes fired a dark column of ash thousands of metres into the sky in a 'moderately explosive eruption' that lasted nearly six minutes, the state seismology office said.
There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage in towns and cities surrounding Mount Mayon, but the country's volcano institute raised the alert level from 2 to 3 on its 0-5 scale and called for evacuations within six kilometres of the crater.
The 3,000-metre ash column gradually drifted southwest onto nearby population centres, the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said in a bulletin.