KARO, Indonesia – Indonesian rescuers searched for survivors in scorched villages and devastated farmlands Monday after a volcano erupted in clouds of searing ash and gas, killing seven and leaving others fighting life-threatening burns.

Witnesses have described sheer panic as waves of gas and fine rock were unleashed from Mount Sinabung on Sumatra island Saturday, consuming farmers trying to flee the slopes of the highly active volcano.

The fast-moving flows – reaching temperatures of up to 700 degrees Celsius (1,300 Fahrenheit) – incinerated homes and left livestock blackened and peeling.

Agustatius Sitepu, the head of the local military in Karo district where the volcano is situated, arrived to scenes of chaos as rescue crews raced to reach those left alive.

“The villagers who managed to survive were running around in panic, trying to save themselves,” he told AFP on Monday.

“There were only a few dozen. They were terrified. They were covered in ash.” The eruptions were so violent that townships as far away as 12 kilometres (seven miles) were covered in thick layers of ash, he added.

Villagers are trying to recover from Saturday’s eruption.

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Reuters, AFP

Abdi Putera, an orange farmer, was busy getting rid of the volcanic ash which covers his oranges, despite the government warning the area is still dangerous.

“If I don’t blow off the ashes, it will get thicker and thicker and will eventually damage my oranges. If that happens, I wouldn’t be able to sell my crops and make a living for my family,” Putera explained.

Those worst affected were all farming within the “red zone” – an area four kilometres from Sinabung declared off limits by authorities – when the volcano erupted.

Six bodies were recovered Sunday, with three others rushed to hospital suffering horrific burns.

One of the victims succumbed to their wounds by nightfall, taking the official toll to seven, local disaster mitigation agency chief Nata Nail told AFP on Monday.

“Two more remain in the intensive care unit, suffering burns to 90 per cent of their body,” he said.

Footage showed their clothes blackened and hanging off charred limbs as rescue teams brought them by stretcher to hospital.

Nail said rescue teams were still finding survivors on Sunday during sweeps of homes and farms in Gamber village.

The Sinabung mountain has shown less activity on Monday, but officials from the Indonesian meteorology, climatology and geophysics agency known as the BMKG are continously monitoring the mountain’s activity.

“The Pyroclastic is very dangerous. Not only because of its flow and steam, but it also brings secondary dangers such as cold lava flow and flash floods,” said Arif, an officer with the BMKG.

Residents were ordered to evacuate Gamber in late 2014 due to the unacceptable risk from lava flows, dense ash and falling volcanic rock.

But some villagers grew tired of living in temporary shelters and began returning to their farms for economic reasons, despite repeated government warnings.

“We hope because of this disaster, those living near Sinabung, and tourists, will realise that Sinabung is still very dangerous,” Nail said.

Sinabung roared back to life in 2010 for the first time in 400 years. After another period of inactivity it erupted once more in 2013, and has remained highly active since.

Sixteen people died during a particularly fierce eruption in 2014, and Sinabung remains at the highest alert level.

KATHMANDU – An Indian mountaineer has died on Mount Everest and two of his teammates are missing, expedition organisers said Monday, as the death toll from the Himalayan climbing season rose to five.

Subhash Pal reached the 8,848-metre (29,029-foot) summit on Saturday but collapsed while descending the Hillary Step ice wall and died the following day.

He was the third to die on Everest in recent days, after an Australian and a Dutch climber succumbed to altitude sickness. Another two climbers have died on other peaks.

“He died while the guides were bringing him down,” said Loben Sherpa of Trekking Camp Nepal, which organised the Indian team’s expedition to Mount Everest.

Expedition officials made contact with Pal and teammate Sunita Hazra on Sunday and helped them descend to Camp 3, but the whereabouts of the remaining two climbers are still unknown.

“Sunita has been rescued and brought to a hospital in Kathmandu for treatment. We still don’t have any update on the missing two,” said Sherpa.

Another Indian climber died after falling ill while descending from Mount Dhaulagiri in the Himalayas.

On Thursday a Nepali guide was killed when he slipped and fell 2,000 metres down Mount Lhotse, the world’s fourth-highest peak.

The number of deaths brings the dangers into focus but is not unusual – according to the authoritative Himalayan Database, 34 people died on Everest in the five years to 2013.

As climbers ascend above 8,000 metres, they enter the “death zone” – notorious for its difficult terrain and thin air – where oxygen supplies fall to dangerously low levels and make mountaineers susceptible to altitude sickness.

“There are mixed feelings with the recent deaths, frostbite and rescues as it brings into focus the danger of climbing Everest,” said veteran mountaineer and blogger Alan Arnette.

“However there is a sense of relief that in many ways, it was a ‘normal’ season.” A tourism official said more than 30 climbers had been rescued this season after suffering altitude sickness or frostbite.

More than 350 climbers including 140 foreigners have successfully scaled Everest this season after two consecutive years of deadly disasters that led to almost all attempts being abandoned.

Since the first summit of the world’s highest peak in 1953 more than 300 people have died on Everest and Lhotse, which share the same route until Camp 3 at 7,200 metres.

The last year in which no deaths were recorded on the mountain was 1977.

Despite the risks and recent disasters, Everest’s allure remains undimmed, with Nepal issuing 289 permits to foreigners for this year’s spring climbing season.

Hundreds of climbers fled Everest last year after an earthquake-triggered avalanche at base camp killed 18 people.

Only one climber reached the top in 2014 after an avalanche killed 16 Nepali guides that year.

Mountaineering is a major revenue-earner for impoverished Nepal. But last year’s earthquake, which killed almost 9,000 people nationwide, threatened the future of the Himalayan nation’s climbing and trekking industry.

At least 13 killed in Mount Everest’s deadliest avalanche

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MUMBAI – An Indian airline has grounded two pilots for attempting to land their plane on a road which they mistook for a runway, the airline and reports said Monday.

The IndiGo flight from Ahmedabad in Gujarat state to Jaipur in Rajasthan was close to touching down until the pilots were alerted by a “too low terrain” warning in the cockpit, IndiGo said in a statement.

“The captain in command immediately took a precautionary measure and carried a go-around. The aircraft landed safely on subsequent approach,” added the statement.

The incident, the latest to highlight safety concerns in India’s rapidly expanding aviation sector, happened on February 27 but has only just come to light in Indian media.

The Hindustan Times quoted an aviation official as saying the plane was at an altitude of around 900 feet and 90 seconds away from landing on a road running parallel to the runway.

IndiGo said the pilots were made aware of their mistake by an enhanced ground proximity warning system, which alerts the cockpit if the plane is in danger of flying into the ground or hitting something.

“At no time was safety compromised. Both pilots have been taken off flight duty with immediate effect, pending investigation,” said the statement.

“The matter was duly reported to the (aviation regulator) Directorate General of Civil Aviation by IndiGo flight safety department,” IndiGo added.

IndiGo, famed for its no-frills approach and fixation with punctuality, commands almost 40 per cent of its home market, the biggest share of any airline. It is the country’s only consistently profitable airline.

The government wants to make air travel affordable for millions of its citizens but a number of safety incidents have led to concerns over the speed of growth.

Earlier this year an Air India plane with 160 passengers was forced to return to New Delhi almost 30 minutes into a Milan-bound flight after smoke was detected in the cabin.

In December a London-bound Air India flight with over 200 passengers returned to Mumbai after three hours in the air over a suspected rat sighting in the cabin.

That same month a technician working for Air India died after being sucked into a jet engine as the plane pushed back for take-off at Mumbai airport.

TAIPEI – Taiwanese prosecutors indicted a man Monday for murder over the public decapitation of a four year old girl, saying they would seek the death penalty for the “extremely cold-blooded” attack.

Wang Ching-yu, 33, is accused of overpowering the mother of the child near a metro station in central Taipei, and beheading the young girl with a kitchen knife.

The mother and a number of bystanders tried to intervene but were pushed away and unable to save the child, who police have identified only by the surname Liu.

Taiwanese man beheads toddler in front of her mum

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Apple Daily, Internet screengrabs

Prosecutors at the Shihlin District Court in Taipei said that it was an “extremely cold-blooded” crime which had deeply shocked the generally peaceful island.

“It has caused indelible pain to her mother, who witnessed the cruelty,” prosecutors said in a statement at the close of their investigation, which took less than two months.

“The suspect has never repented… so we suggest the court sentence him to death,” they said, adding that capital punishment in this instance was important to maintain society’s faith in law and justice.

Taiwan resumed capital punishment in 2010 after a five-year hiatus. Executions are reserved for serious crimes such as aggravated murder.

Some politicians and rights groups have called for its abolition, but various opinion surveys show majority support for the death penalty.

After the March 28 decapitation, hundreds of Taiwanese, many dressed in black and wearing stickers reading “Death penalty is necessary”, called for Wang to be executed.

Wang was arrested at the scene of the crime and was subsequently taken into custody.

Prosecutors say that blood test show Wang was not under the influence of drugs at the time of the crime, nor had he displayed any signs of mental illness after the attack.

Police said the 33-year-old had previously been arrested for drug-related crimes. He was attacked by an angry mob while in custody.

Taiwan’s Apple Daily has reported that he was unemployed and living with his parents, and had previously been hospitalised with mental health issues.

The killing came less than a year after the throat of an eight-year-old girl was slit in her school restroom in Taipei. It sparked widespread public anger and fresh debate about capital punishment.

BANGKOK – Lawyers filed an appeal on Monday against the conviction of two Myanmar migrant workers sentenced to death in Thailand for the 2014 murder of two British backpackers on a holiday island, another twist in a case mired in controversy and dispute.

The bodies of backpackers Hannah Witheridge and David Miller were found on a beach on Koh Tao island in September 2014. Police said Witheridge, 23, had been raped and bludgeoned to death and Miller, 24, had suffered blows to his head.

A court sentenced Myanmar migrant workers Zaw Lin and Win Zaw Htun to death after convicting them of the crime on Dec. 24 last year.

The 198-page appeal says that DNA evidence used in the case was inadmissible and had not been collected, tested, analysed or reported in accordance with internationally accepted standards, representatives of the two men said in a statement on Monday.

The appeal also states that the questioning and charging of the migrant workers was unlawful because it was done without lawyers or trusted persons present, according to the statement. Confessions, which the two later retracted, were extracted through torture or abuse, it said.

The Thai police have denied mishandling the evidence or that confessions were extracted under duress.

The mothers of the two Myanmar men accompanied the lawyers to court on Monday after visiting their sons on death row in a prison near Bangkok at the weekend, the statement said.

“We have submitted this to the appeal court so they can understand more, so they can see the importance on how death sentence decision needs to be perfectly clear,” Nakhon Chompuchat, the defence team’s head lawyer, told Reuters.

“We don’t have new evidence, we are basing this on evidence that was presented earlier,” he said.

The court would likely rule on the appeal in 2017, he said.

Thai police drew widespread domestic and international criticism for their handling of the case and the evidence. Protests erupted in neighbouring Myanmar after the verdict, with many people there believing the two workers were scapegoats.

Koh Tao murder: Hundreds protest for release of Myanmar workers

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Reuters, AFP