REYKJAVIK—An eruption began at the Grimsvoetn volcano under Iceland’s largest glacier Saturday, a meteorologist at the Icelandic Meteorological Office said, adding that a tall plume of smoke was rising from the crater.
“An eruption at Grimsvoetn has started and there’s an airplane on its way there now to investigate further,” Haraldur Eirkisson told AFP.
“There was a cloud rising up from Grimsvoetn around 1900 GMT and at just before 2000 GMT it had reached an altitude of 11 kilometers (6.8 miles),” he added.
The Grimsvoetn volcano lies beneath the Vatnajoekull glacier in the southeast of the North Atlantic island nation.
The eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjoell volcano in April last year shut down large swathes of European airspace for almost a month amid fears of what the damage the volcanic ash could wreak on aircraft engines.