<p class="title rtejustify">Indonesian authorities ordered people living near a volcano to leave their homes on Friday and a major city closed its airport after the 5,500 metre (18,000 ft) peak sent a column of steam and ash into the sky.</p>.<p class="bodytext rtejustify">The Mount Merapi volcano on densely populated Java island is one of the most active in Indonesia and a series of eruptions in 2010 killed more than 350 people.</p>.<p class="bodytext rtejustify">A disaster mitigation agency told residents living within a 5 km (3 miles) radius of the mountain to move to shelters, agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said in a statement.</p>.<p class="bodytext rtejustify">He said that 120 people who had been hiking up Merapi were safe.</p>.<p class="bodytext rtejustify">The airport in Yogyakarta, the nearest big city to the volcano, shut because of the threat from the ash, the state-owned aviation agency AirNav said in a statement.</p>.<p class="bodytext rtejustify">The disaster agency described Merapi's latest eruption as phreatic, which means magma heats up groundwater and vapour is released under pressure.</p>.<p class="bodytext rtejustify">The alert status on Merapi had not be raised, it said.</p>
<p class="title rtejustify">Indonesian authorities ordered people living near a volcano to leave their homes on Friday and a major city closed its airport after the 5,500 metre (18,000 ft) peak sent a column of steam and ash into the sky.</p>.<p class="bodytext rtejustify">The Mount Merapi volcano on densely populated Java island is one of the most active in Indonesia and a series of eruptions in 2010 killed more than 350 people.</p>.<p class="bodytext rtejustify">A disaster mitigation agency told residents living within a 5 km (3 miles) radius of the mountain to move to shelters, agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said in a statement.</p>.<p class="bodytext rtejustify">He said that 120 people who had been hiking up Merapi were safe.</p>.<p class="bodytext rtejustify">The airport in Yogyakarta, the nearest big city to the volcano, shut because of the threat from the ash, the state-owned aviation agency AirNav said in a statement.</p>.<p class="bodytext rtejustify">The disaster agency described Merapi's latest eruption as phreatic, which means magma heats up groundwater and vapour is released under pressure.</p>.<p class="bodytext rtejustify">The alert status on Merapi had not be raised, it said.</p>