A Japanese volcano popular with hikers erupted on Saturday, killing one woman and seriously injuring more than 30 people, officials and media said.
"It was like thunder," a woman told public broadcaster NHK of the first eruption at the volcano in seven years. "I heard boom, boom, then everything went dark."
NHK, citing the local fire brigade, reported that one woman had been confirmed dead. More than 30 people were seriously injured and 10 of them were unconscious, it said.
The injured were stranded in mountain lodges, because they were unable to descend 3,067-metre Mount Ontake on their own, said Sohei Hanamura, a crisis management official in Nagano prefecture.
Ash from Mount Ontake covered these mountain lodges. The volcanic eruption left more than 250 people stranded near the peak, but most managed to make their way to safety. (Kyodo/Reuters)
Police, fire and military rescue workers were trying to approach the area on foot, after deciding that the ash in the air made it too dangerous to use helicopters. The ash was also hampering their ascent.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who returned from the United States on Saturday, said he had ordered the military to help in rescue efforts.
"I instructed to do all we can to rescue the people affected and secure the safety of the trekkers," Abe told reporters.
The volcano erupted shortly before noon local time on a clear autumn day, spewing large white plumes of ash high into the sky and sending people on the mountainside fleeing.
The eruption continued into the night, blanketing the surrounding area in ash. About 250 people were initially trapped on the slopes, but most had made their way down by Saturday night, Japanese public broadcaster NHK reported. Some were in shelters set up in four nearby towns.
In a YouTube video, shocked climbers can be seen moving quickly away from the peak as an expanding plume of ash emerges above and then engulfs them.
Many of those who made it down emerged with clothes and backpacks covered in ash. They reported being engulfed in total darkness for several minutes.
"It's all white outside, looks like it has snowed. There is very bad visibility and we can't see the top of the mountain," Mari Tezuka, who works at a mountain hut for trekkers, told Reuters.
"All we can do now is shut up the hut and then we are planning on coming down ... This is a busy season because of the changing autumn leaves. It's one of our busiest seasons."
Mikio Oguro, an NHK journalist who was on the slope on an unrelated assignment, told the station that he saw massive smoke coming out of the crater, blocking sunlight and reducing visibility to zero.
"Massive ash suddenly fell and the entire area was totally covered with ash," he said by phone. He and his crew had to use headlamps to find a lodge," Oguro said.
"My colleagues later told me that they thought they might die."
Tokyo's Haneda airport said incoming domestic flights were experiencing delays of about 40 to 50 minutes because they were forced to change routes. International flights to and from Haneda were not affected by the eruption, the airport said.
Japan's meteorological agency raised the alert level for Mount Ontake to 3 on a scale of 1 to 5. It warned people to stay away from the mountain, saying ash and other debris could fall up to 4 kilometres away.
Mount Ontake, about 210 kilometres west of Tokyo, sits on the border of Nagano and Gifu prefectures, on the main Japanese island of Honshu. The volcano's last major eruption was in 1979.
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