Merapi death toll mounts after fresh eruption

ARGOMULYO, Indonesia — Indonesia's most active volcano killed 69 people Friday in its biggest eruption in over a century, incinerating homes, grounding flights and driving thousands into shelters.Ash, deadly heat clouds and molten debris gushed from the mouth of Mount Merapi and shot high into the sky for most of the night and into the morning, triggering panic and chaos on the roads as people fled in the darkness.The latest deaths bring the overall toll to more than 100 since the volcano started erupting on Java island on October 26, a day after a tsunami killed more than 400 people in a remote area off Sumatra island to the west.The mountain spewed ash over a vast area including the Central Java provincial capital of Yogyakarta, about 28 kilometres (17 miles) to the south. "The death toll is now at 69 including nine children under 10 years old," said Heru Nugroho, a spokesman for Sarjito general hospital in Yogyakarta.Many of the dead were from Argomulyo village, 18 kilometres from the crater, according to emergency response officials and witnesses."I found three bodies: a child, mother and father, still in their bed. They must have been sleeping when the hot ash struck their house," rescuer Utha told AFP as he delivered 10 bodies to the hospital."We also found a dead man with a phone still in his hand."Yogyakarta police force medic Teguh Dwi Santosa said: "Argomulyo village has been burned down to the ground by the heat clouds. Many children have died there. When I was in the village the ground was still hot."A river running through the village overflowed with a thick mixture of mud and ash, and several bodies lay unclaimed in the debris, witnesses said.The ranks of evacuees swelled past 100,000 people, with 30,000 moved into a sports stadium about 25 kilometres away from the peak.The international airport at Yogyakarta was closed as ash clouds billowed from the 2,914-metre (9,616-foot) mountain to the altitude of cruising jetliners and the runway was covered in grey soot.Officials said the airport wo

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