AlQa'dah 04, 1435, August 30, 2014, SPA -- Seismic activity continued at Iceland's Bardarbunga volcano Saturday, with hundreds of earthquakes striking the site over the course of several hours, but there were no air traffic bans, dpa quoted the civil defence agency as saying. About 450 quakes were recorded from midnight (0000 GMT) to 7 am. The most powerful was a 5.4-magnitude in the caldera of the volcano, situated under the Vatnajokull glacier in south-east Iceland, the Meteorological Office said. There was also activity at the Holuhraun lava field north of the glacier, where a small lava eruption occurred overnight Friday. That eruption ceased after four hours. Air traffic was banned over the volcano on Friday after authorities briefly raised the alert to red, the highest level, before authorities downgraded it back to orange. The orange alert designation is the second-highest, meaning that the volcano "shows heightened or escalating unrest with increased potential of an eruption." A 2010 eruption of a volcano under the Eyjafjallajokull glacier disrupted air travel for several weeks. Areas north of the Vatnajokull glacier were earlier evacuated and roads leading into the highlands area remain closed amid fears that an eruption could melt the glacier, causing severe flooding. The civil defence authority was Saturday on its second highest alert level, spokesman August Gunnar Gylfason told dpa. -- SPA 15:24 LOCAL TIME 12:24 GMT تغريد
