Thousands flee Sumatra volcano

TANJUNG AUA, Indonesia (Reuters) -- More than 25,000 panicked residents have been evacuated from the slopes of a rumbling volcano on Indonesia's Sumatra island and officials raised the alert level as the mountain's activity intensified.
The heightened rumbling of Mount Talang has coincided with a string of moderate earthquakes on Sumatra, which is still recovering from a massive December 26 quake and tsunami that killed nearly 130,000 people in Aceh province to the north.
"The status of Mount Talang is now at top alert," Surono, a vulcanologist from the Directorate of Vulcanology and Geophysics in the Java city of Bandung, told Reuters.