Mount Etna has started blowing lava from one of its main craters but the latest bout of activity should not endanger local residents, experts said Monday.
Lava from the south-east crater, which first started showing renewed signs of life at the end of March, was flowing down towards an uninhabited area, they said.
The sound of the mountain belching out lava could be heard for miles around, civil defence officials said.
Seismologists said the latest eruption cycle was unlikely to cause disruption - unlike the most recent one in October-November, in which Etna sprayed the nearby city of Catania with ash and the local airport had to be closed down for a few days.
Those eruptions were on the other side of the volcano, coming from a south-west crater.
Before that, in October 2002, a series of tremors and eruptions damaged buildings and left 1,000 people temporarily homeless.
But these have been minor incidents.
The last bout of serious volcanic activity on Europe's most active volcano was in the summer of 2001.
The eruptions made international headlines as parts of an important ski resort, the Rifugio Sapienza, were engulfed and the town of Nicolosi was threatened with a similar fate.
Viewers around the world were also held spellbound by the beauty of the spectacle, which experts said was one of the most unusual and complex eruptions in three centuries.
The volcano's previous major eruption was in 1992, when the Italian military had to use controlled explosions to divert lava away from the town of Zafferana on the mountain's lower slopes.
Italy's other world-famous Sicilian volcano, on the island of Stromboli, erupted back to life earlier this year, disrupting local shipping and forcing coast-line evacuations on other islands.
