Congo volcanic eruption ruins town, kills 45

GISENYI (RWANDA), JANUARY 18: A river of molten rock poured from a volcano in Congo on Friday, a day after it erupted, killing dozens, swallowing buildings whole and forcing hundreds of thousands of people to flee the city of Goma.

UN officials estimated 45 people had died in the 24 hours after tongues of red hot lava began forking from Nyiragongo volcano through villages on its slopes, down through Goma itself and on into Lake Kivu, which straddles the Rwandan border.

‘‘This is going to be a human catastrophe,’’ said an official from a contingent of UN ceasefire observers deployed in the eastern Congolese city of more than half a million. ‘‘We have to find them shelter, put them up in camps. There’s no electricity, no running water.’’

The UN observers are part of efforts to end a civil war.

Overnight, the horizon was one long stretch of flames and smoke, from time to time broken as fuel stations caught fire with a bang.

Earth tremors shook the town every half an hour. As dawn broke on a fire-scarred landscape draped with smoke and mist, rescuers dug out corpses from hardening lava that had engulfed whole houses.

The river of liquid rock had stopped flowing. But in other areas crowds gathered to gaze in mingled awe and horror as lava continued to snake into doorways and down streets. Parts of the runway at Goma airport had disappeared under the smoking tide. In the nearby town of Gisenyi, just across the border in Rwanda, displaced people lined the sides of the roads overnight, lying down to sleep anywhere they could find a patch of ground. (Reuters)