Bali Airport Reopens after 2-Day Closure over Volcano Eruption

Mount Agung volcano erupts as seen from Culik Village, Karangasem, Bali, Indonesia. (Reuters)
Mount Agung volcano erupts as seen from Culik Village, Karangasem, Bali, Indonesia. (Reuters)
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Bali Airport Reopens after 2-Day Closure over Volcano Eruption

Mount Agung volcano erupts as seen from Culik Village, Karangasem, Bali, Indonesia. (Reuters)
Mount Agung volcano erupts as seen from Culik Village, Karangasem, Bali, Indonesia. (Reuters)

Bali airport reopened on Wednesday following a closure of two days due to a volcano eruption that spread ash across the holiday island, Indonesian authorities announced.

The closure had left tourists stranded and created flight chaos.

“Bali’s international airport started operating normally,” air traffic control provider AirNav said in a statement, adding that operations resumed at 2:28 p.m. (0628 GMT).

The reopening of the facility does not mean that the danger of the volcano was over. Authorities downgraded an aviation warning to “orange”, one level below the most serious.

The decision to resume operations followed an emergency meeting at the airport, weighed up weather conditions, tests and data from AirNav and other groups, AirNav added.

Singapore Airlines Ltd said it would resume flights between Singapore and Bali on Wednesday. Australia’s Qantas Airways Ltd said it and budget arm Jetstar would run 16 flights to Australia on Thursday to ferry home 3,800 stranded customers.

A large plume of white and grey ash and smoke hovered above Agung on Wednesday, after night-time rain partially obscured a fiery glow at its peak over the last few days.

Agung towers over eastern Bali to a height of just over 3,000 meters (9,800 feet).

President Joko Widodo implored residents living in a zone around Agung deemed at risk to seek refuge in emergency centers, as winds sending an ash cloud southwest across the island once again halted flights.

He ordered all concerned ministries and agencies, as well as the military and police, to help Bali's government deal with the disaster.

"I hope there will be no victims hit by the eruption," he said.

Earlier, the transport ministry had said Bali’s airport, the country’s second biggest, would stay shut until at least 7 a.m. on Thursday (2300 GMT on Wednesday).

A spokesman for Bali’s I Gusti Ngurah Rai International Airport said as many as 430 domestic and international flights had been disrupted on Wednesday by the closure of the airport, about 60 km (37 miles) away from Mount Agung.

Authorities have told 100,000 people to leave an area extending up to 10 kilometers (6 miles) in places from the volcano as it belches gray and white plumes.

Nearly 40,000 people are now staying in 225 shelters, according to the Disaster Mitigation Agency in Karangasem. But tens of thousands more have remained in their homes because they feel safe or do not want to abandon their land and livestock.

In the village of Tulamben inside the exclusion zone, farmers were seen ploughing their fields with cattle Wednesday, seemingly unbothered by the smoking mountain behind them swelling with orange lava.

For others, there was a sense of urgency.

Some stranded tourists managed to get off the island before the airport reopened, but they faced an arduous journey involving crowded roads, buses, ferries and sometimes overnight waits in yet another airport in Surabaya on the island of Java.

The volcano's last major eruption, in 1963, killed about 1,100 people, but it's unclear how bad the current situation might get or how long it could last. A worst-case scenario would involve an explosive eruption that causes the mountain's cone to collapse.

"An analogy would be the twin towers collapsing in New York on 9/11," said Richard Arculus, a volcano expert at Australian National University. "You saw people running away from the debris raining down and columns of dust pursing people down the street. You will not be able to outrun this thing."

Indonesian officials first raised the highest alert two months ago when seismic activity increased at the mountain.

Indonesia sits on the Pacific "Ring of Fire" and has more than 120 active volcanoes.



Trump Envoy Arrives in Kyiv as US Pledges Patriot Missiles to Ukraine

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, left, shakes hands with United States Special Envoy for Ukraine and Russia, Joseph Keith Kellogg, during their meeting in Rome, Italy, Wednesday, July 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, left, shakes hands with United States Special Envoy for Ukraine and Russia, Joseph Keith Kellogg, during their meeting in Rome, Italy, Wednesday, July 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)
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Trump Envoy Arrives in Kyiv as US Pledges Patriot Missiles to Ukraine

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, left, shakes hands with United States Special Envoy for Ukraine and Russia, Joseph Keith Kellogg, during their meeting in Rome, Italy, Wednesday, July 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, left, shakes hands with United States Special Envoy for Ukraine and Russia, Joseph Keith Kellogg, during their meeting in Rome, Italy, Wednesday, July 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

US President Donald Trump´s special envoy to Ukraine and Russia, retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, arrived in Kyiv on Monday, a senior Ukrainian official said, as anticipation grew over a possible shift in the Trump administration´s policy on the more than three-year war.

Trump last week teased that he would make a "major statement" on Russia on Monday. Trump made quickly stopping the war one of his diplomatic priorities, and he has increasingly expressed frustration about Russian President Vladimir Putin´s unbudging stance on US-led peace efforts.

Trump has long boasted of his friendly relationship with Putin and after taking office in January repeatedly said that Russia was more willing than Ukraine to reach a peace deal. At the same time, Trump accused Zelenskyy of prolonging the war and called him a "dictator without elections”, AFP said.

But Russia´s relentless onslaught against civilian areas of Ukraine wore down Trump´s patience. In April, Trump urged Putin to "STOP!" launching deadly barrages on Kyiv, and the following month said in a social media post that the Russian leader " has gone absolutely CRAZY!" as the bombardments continued.

"I am very disappointed with President Putin, I thought he was somebody that meant what he said," Trump said late Sunday. "He´ll talk so beautifully and then he´ll bomb people at night. We don´t like that."

Trump confirmed the US is sending Ukraine badly needed US-made Patriot air defense missiles to help it fend off Russia´s intensifying aerial attacks.

Trump said that the European Union will pay the US for the "various pieces of very sophisticated" weaponry it is sending.

However, the EU is not allowed under its treaties to buy weapons. EU member countries are buying and sending weapons to Ukraine, just as NATO member countries are buying and sending weapons. EU countries set up the European Peace Facility so that countries which supply arms to Ukraine could be refunded to backfill their own stocks.

Russia has pounded Ukrainian cities, including the capital, Kyiv, with hundreds of drones and cruise and ballistic missiles that Ukraine's air defenses are struggling to counter. June brought the highest monthly civilian casualties of the past three years, with 232 people killed and 1,343 wounded, the UN human rights mission in Ukraine said Thursday. Russia launched 10 times more drones and missiles in June than in the same month last year, it said.

That has happened at the same time as Russia's bigger army is making a new effort to drive back Ukrainian defenders on parts of the 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line.

A top ally of Trump, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, said Sunday that the conflict is nearing an inflection point as Trump shows growing interest in helping Ukraine fight back against Russia's full-scale invasion. It´s a cause that Trump had previously dismissed as being a waste of US taxpayer money.

"In the coming days, you´ll see weapons flowing at a record level to help Ukraine defend themselves," Graham said on CBS´ "Face the Nation." He added: "One of the biggest miscalculations (Russian President Vladimir) Putin has made is to play Trump. And you just watch, in the coming days and weeks, there´s going to be a massive effort to get Putin to the table."

Kirill Dmitriev, Putin´s envoy for international investment, dismissed what he said were efforts to drive a wedge between Moscow and Washington.

"Constructive dialogue between Russia and the United States is more effective than doomed-to-fail attempts at pressure," Dmitriev said in a post on Telegram. "This dialogue will continue, despite titanic efforts to disrupt it by all possible means."

"Equal dialogue, mutual respect, realism and economic cooperation are the foundations of global security," he added, echoing comments by Putin.

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte was due in Washington on Monday and Tuesday. He planned to hold talks with Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, as well as members of Congress.

Talks during Kellogg´s visit to Kyiv will cover "defense, strengthening security, weapons, sanctions, protection of our people and enhancing cooperation between Ukraine and the United States," said the head of Ukraine´s presidential office, Andrii Yermak.

"Russia does not want a cease fire. Peace through strength is President Donald Trump´s principle, and we support this approach," Yermak said.

Russian troops conducted a combined aerial strike at Shostka, in the northern Sumy region of Ukraine, using glide bombs and drones early Monday morning, killing two people, the regional prosecutor´s office said. Four others were injured, including a 7-year-old, it said.

Overnight from Sunday to Monday, Russia fired four S-300/400 missiles and 136 Shahed and decoy drones at Ukraine, the air force said. It said that 61 drones were intercepted and 47 more were either jammed or lost from radars mid-flight.

The Russian Defense Ministry, meanwhile, said its air defenses downed 11 Ukrainian drones over Russian regions on the border with Ukraine, as well as over the annexed Crimea and the Black Sea.