Tanjung Lesung, Indonesia: Indonesian authorities warned on Wednesday of 'extreme weather and high waves' around the erupting Anak Krakatau volcano, urging people to stay away from the coast already devastated by a tsunami that killed more than 400 people.
Clouds of ash spewed from Anak Krakatau, almost obscuring the volcanic island where a crater collapse at high tide on Saturday sent waves up to 5 metres (16 feet) high smashing into the coast on the Sunda Strait, between Java and Sumatra islands.
Indonesia's meteorology agency (BMKG) said late on Tuesday the rough weather around the volcano could make its crater more fragile.
"We have developed a monitoring system focused specifically on the volcanic tremors at Anak Krakatau so that we can issue early warnings," said BMKG head Dwikorita Karnawati, adding that a two-kilometre exclusion zone had been imposed.
The confirmed death toll is 429, with at least 154 people missing. More than 1,400 were injured and thousands of people have moved to higher ground.
The vast archipelago has suffered its worst annual death toll from disasters in more than a decade.
The latest disaster, coming during the Christmas season, evoked memories of the Indian Ocean tsunami triggered by an earthquake on Dec. 26, 2004, which killed 226,000 people in 14 countries, including more than 120,000 in Indonesia.
The Saturday evening tsunami followed the collapse of an area of the volcano island of about 64 hectares (222 acres), or about 90 soccer pitches.
The waves engulfed fishing villages and holiday beach parties at resorts, leaving a coast littered with crushed vehicles, felled trees. Chunks of metal, wooden beams and household items have been strewn across roads and rice fields.
In 1883, the volcano then known as Krakatoa erupted in one of the biggest blasts in recorded history, killing more than 36,000 people in a series of tsunami, and lowering the global surface temperature by one degree Celsius with its ash.
Anak Krakatau (child of Krakatau) is the island that emerged from the area in 1927, and has been growing ever since.
Country marks 2004 disaster
Indonesia on Wednesday also commemorates the 167,799 people who lost their lives in the country in 2004 as a result of the December 26 Boxing Day tsunami caused by a magnitude-9.1 earthquake off the northern coast of Sumatra. The disaster also caused deaths in a dozen other nations around the Indian Ocean, killing around 2,30,000 people in total.
Various events will take place Wednesday night in the Sumatran province of Aceh, the hardest hit by the natural disaster, under the slogan "Build together, stay alert," chosen for the 14th anniversary.
Indonesia is situated on the Pacific Ring of Fire, an area of great seismic and volcanic activity that is shaken every year by some 7,000 earthquakes, most of them moderate.
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