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Authorities have begun evacuating 3,000 residents near the Mount Ibu volcano on Indonesia's eastern island of Halmahera, the disaster agency said on Thursday (January 16), after an eruption this week sent a cloud of thick grey ash as high as four-km (2.5-mile) into the sky.

Ibu erupted on Wednesday (January 15) morning for about two minutes, Indonesia's volcanology agency said, forcing authorities to raise the alert level in the surrounding areas to the most severe.

The evacuations started late on Wednesday for about 3,000 residents around the area who were being prioritized due to their proximity to the volcano, Abdul Muhari, a spokesperson for the country's disaster mitigation agency, told Reuters.

Ibu's activities follow a series of eruptions of different volcanoes in Indonesia, which sits on the Pacific "Ring of Fire" and has 127 active volcanoes.