Searing Ash Spews toward Indonesian Villagers

Updated at 11:58 p.m. ET

The death toll from Indonesia's fiery volcano has climbed to nearly 100 after a blistering gas cloud ripped through a mountainside village.

Hospital spokesman Heru Nugroho said 54 bodies were brought in after the inferno. More than 66 others were injured, many of them critically with burns.

Men with ash-covered faces streamed down Mount Merapi on motorcycles followed by truckloads of women and crying children, following the massive eruption just before midnight Friday.

Soldiers helped clear the bodies from the hard-hit village of Bronggang, located nine miles from the crater, bringing them to the hospital morgue.

Earlier Thursday, the toll stood at 44, with most of the victims dying in the first, Oct. 26 eruption.

It was not immediately clear why families living within Merapi's "danger zone" had not been evacuated.

Eruptions at the volcano appeared to be intensifying Friday, as clouds of searing gas and ash cascaded down the mountain, torching homes in one slope-side village and triggering a chaotic midnight evacuation.

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Even staff at the mountain's main monitoring post were told to move farther away from the glowing crater.

It was not immediately clear why the village - 6 miles from the crater and well inside the "danger-zone" - had not been evacuated.

Witnesses told the station more victims were waiting for help. Mount Merapi, one of the world's most active volcanoes, came bursting back to life on Oct. 26. More than 100 others have been injured. Mount Merapi, which means "Fire Mountain," is one of the world's most active volcanoes.

Even those who have dedicated a lifetime to studying it have been baffled by its erratic behavior since its first Oct. 26 eruption, which has been followed by more than a dozen other powerful blasts and thousands of volcanic tremors.

They'd earlier hoped that would result in a long, slow release of energy.

"But we have no idea what to expect now," said Surono, a state volcanologist, adding that he has never seen the needle on Merapi's seismograph working with such intensity.

The fear is that a new lava dome forming in the mouth of the crater will collapse, triggering a deadly surge of up to 1,800 degree Fahrenheit ash and gas - known to experts as pyroclastic flows - at speeds of 60 miles per hour.

Though more than 75,000 people living along its fertile slopes have been evacuated to crowded emergency shelters away from the crater, dozens risk their lives to return during periods of calm to check on their livestock and homes.

With no winds early Thursday, white clouds from Merapi fired a spectacular 20,000 feet into the sky. Gusts later carried the smoke westward, dusting roof tops, trees and laundry lines far away with thick white powder. Rain pounded the region later in the day, clogging mountainside rivers with molten rocks and debris.

Activity at Merapi has at times briefly forced nearby airports to close and the Transportation Ministry reiterated Thursday that flight paths near the mountain had been shut down for safety reasons.

Officials insisted, however, that a Qantas jetliner forced to make an emergency landing after one of its four engines failed over Batam, an island 800 miles to the west, was unrelated.

"There was no connection with Mount Merapi," said Bambang Ervan, a spokesman for the Transportation Ministry. "It was too far from the volcano - the sky over Singapore and Sumatra island is free of dust."

In 1994, 60 people were killed, while in 1930, more than a dozen villages were torched, leaving up to 1,300 dead.

Mount Merapi's "danger zone" was widened for the second time in as many days Friday following another booming explosion around midnight.

Subandrio, a state volcanologist, said people living in villages and emergency camps within 12 miles of the crater were told to clear out.

Indonesia, a vast archipelago of 235 million people, is prone to earthquakes and volcanos because it sits along the Pacific "Ring of Fire," a horseshoe-shaped string of faults that lines the Pacific.

The volcano's initial blast occurred less than 24 hours after a towering tsunami slammed into the remote Mentawai islands on the western end of the country, sweeping entire villages to sea and killing at least 428 people.

There, too, thousands of people were displaced, many living in government camps.