Indonesia’s Mount Sinabung volcano had its biggest eruption yet on Friday. Plumes of smoke shot 2 miles into the air. Villagers were asleep when the eruption started at 4:30 in the morning.

[Surono, Vulcanology Center Chief]:
"At 04:38 this morning the volcano erupt again. There was thundering sound, we felt the tremors in here."

The dark thick clouds around the 8,000 foot high volcano's peak made it difficult to see the eruption.

It was the third this week, three times stronger than the first eruption recorded last Sunday.

A number of villagers have taken refuge at 20 nearby shelters.

[Sulam Ginting, Villager]:          
"I hope the government will pay more attention to us and improve our condition here."

Around 30,000 people have been evacuated in the last week, mainly from farming villages, with many crowding into refugee camps in nearby towns. Some have begun returning to their villages, but were again whisked out of their homes overnight.

Indonesia is a vast archipelago of some 17,000 islands that lies along the geologically active "Pacific Ring of Fire." It has about 130 active volcanoes and hundreds of inactive ones. Around 70 have erupted over the past 400 years.