Mount Etna erupts leaving tourists fleeing for their lives

Panic ensued

People were pictured legging it away from the humongous volcano in Sicily after it was seen spewing hot ash into the air earlier today.

Etna is Europe's largest active volcano and has been rather active in recent months.

It last erupted back in April and it's going at it again, although that won't stop tourists getting up close and personal.

Thick black smoke could be seen billowing into the air, blotching the pastel blue skyline.

Videos quickly went viral online of the dramatic scene.

Volcanic Ash Advisory Center Toulouse (VAAC) issued a brief ‘code red’ for aviation due to the eruption today.

They said the cloud was "drifting towards the south west".

The volcanic cloud is made up of water and sulfur dioxide.

A live stream of the huge magma mountain has shown that the eruption is now slowing.

Videos showed small figures of people fleeing in front of the huge ash cloud.

Italy's National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology issued a statement at 11.03am local time (10.03am BST), saying: "Over the past few hours, the activity flagged in the previous statement issued at 4.14am (3.14am BST) has carried on with strombolian explosions of growing intensity that, at the moment, are of strong intensity and nearly continuous.

"Over the past few hours, the falling of a little thin ash has been flagged in the Piano Vetore area."

A Strombolian eruption is described as a type of eruption often with mild blasts.

In this scenario the ejections consists of cinders, lapilli and volcanic bombs fired hundreds of metres into the atmosphere.

This term gets its named from another one of Italy's big three volcanoes, Stromboli on the island of the same name.

The other is of course the infamous Mount Vesuvius near Naples.