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REYKJAVIK, island – Iceland's most astir cleft has started erupting, scientists said Sat — meet over a assemblage after added activity on the North ocean island closed downbound dweller expose reciprocation for days.

Iceland's Meteorological Office confirmed that an activity had begun at the Grimsvotn volcano, attended by a program of small earthquakes. Smoke could be seen rising from the volcano, which lies low the uninhabited Vatnajokull glacier in southeast Iceland.

A no curb regularize has been designated for 120 nautical miles (220 kilometers) in every directions from the eruption. Isavia, the company that operates and develops every airfield facilities and expose navigation services in Iceland, described this as standard machine around eruptions.

"The experience of respiration has reached form expose elevation and plans hit been prefabricated for planes expose finished Nordic expose curb expanse to curb southwardly tonight," said Hjordis Gudmundsdottir, the spokeswoman for Isavia.

Grimsvotn terminal erupted in 2004. Scientists hit been expecting a new activity and hit said previously that this volcano's activity will probable be small and should not advance to the expose movement confusion caused in Apr 2010 by tree from the Eyjafjallajokull volcano.

History shows that preceding eruptions in Grimsvotn hit not had such influence on grace reciprocation — different the massive disruption caused terminal year.

Pall Einarsson, geophysicist at the University of Iceland, said terminal year's activity was a rare event.

"The tree in Eyjafjallajokull was persistent or unremitting and fine-grained," Einarsson said. "The tree in Grimsvotn is more coarse and not as probable to drive danger as it water to the connector faster and doesn't meet as daylong in the expose as in the Eyjafjallajokull eruption."

A form from the Nordic Coast Guard carrying experts from the University of island will curb over the cleft and appraise the situation.

One eyewitness, Bolli Valgardsson, said the experience chromatic quickly individual cardinal feet (meters) into the air.

Sparsely populated island is digit of the world's most volcanically astir countries and eruptions are frequent.

Eruptions often drive topical flooding from unfrozen glacier ice, but rarely drive deaths.

Last year's Eyjafjallajokul activity left whatever 10 million expose travelers stranded worldwide after winds pushed the tree cloud toward whatever of the world's busiest air and led most Federal dweller countries to connector every planes for fivesome days.

Whether distributed disruption occurs again will depend on how daylong the activity lasts, how high the tree experience rises and which artefact the twine blows.

In November, dissolved glacial cover began running from Grimsvotn, communication a doable eruption. That was a simulated signal but scientists hit been monitoring the cleft closely ever since.

The cleft also erupted in 1998, 1996 and 1993. The eruptions hit lasted between a period and individual weeks.

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Jill Lawless and Danica Kirka in author contributed to this report.

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