Indonesia prepares for mass burial

Rescuers picked through the rubble of destroyed homes as officials prepared for a mass burial of people killed by the violent eruption of Indonesia's most active volcano.

Ash, deadly heat clouds and molten debris gushed from the mouth of Mount Merapi and shot high into the sky, triggering chaos on the roads as people fled their homes.

The death toll from Friday's eruption -- its most violent in more than a century -- rose to 85, with scores more suffering severe burns.

The latest deaths bring the overall toll to 128 since the volcano started erupting on Java island on October 26, a day after a tsunami killed more than 400 people in a remote area off Sumatra island.

The mountain spewed ash over a vast area including the Central Java provincial capital of Yogyakarta, about 28 kilometres (17 miles) to the south, and continued erupting Saturday, choking out hot ash and gas.

Many of the dead were from Argomulyo village, 18 kilometres from the crater, according to emergency response officials and witnesses, with several children under the age of 10 killed.

Dozens from the village were to be buried in a mass grave in Yogyakarta, disaster management spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said.

"We will bury them in a place where it's safe. There's no way we will have the burial in their village, as the village is within the 20-kilometre danger zone," he said.

Rescuer Utha told AFP as he delivered 10 bodies to the hospital, "I found three bodies: a child, mother and father, still in their bed. They must have been sleeping when the hot ash struck their house.

"We also found a dead man with a phone still in his hand."

Disaster management agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said: "The death toll has risen to 85 people and 289 people are injured."

More than 166,000 people were evacuated after everyone living within the declared "danger zone" had been told to leave their homes immediately, though some were reluctant to abandon their livestock.

Kepuharjo village chief Heri Suprapto, who was evacuated 12 days ago with his wife and four of his children, said he was worried for the safety of people from his village.

"The people from my village are scattered in various temporary shelters. I cannot monitor them all the time," he said.

"We are worried here in shelters. All we do is just wait for aid," Suprapto said, adding it was hard to find suitable milk for his two-year old daughter.

"I can only pray to God. I pray for the mountain to stop erupting," he said.

Government volcanologist Surono said the volcano was hard to predict.

"The eruption from Merapi has not stopped since November 3, although its intensity has gone down and up again," he said, adding there were no plans to expand the "danger zone".

The international airport at Yogyakarta was closed as ash clouds billowed from the 2,914-metre (9,616-foot) mountain to the altitude of cruising jetliners.

It would stay closed until Sunday morning, said general manager Agus Andriyanto, after which they would look at the situation again.

International and regional airlines were affected. Singapore Airlines said it had suspended flights between the city-state and the Indonesian capital Jakarta, which is about 430 kilometres from the volcano.

Malaysian budget carrier AirAsia said flights to the city of Bandung were also disrupted.

Merapi killed around 1,300 people in 1930 but experts say the current eruptions are its biggest convulsions since 1872.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono announced the deployment of an army brigade to help with relief and reconstruction in central Java, as the country struggles to cope with dual natural disasters.

A tsunami smashed into villages on the remote Mentawai island chain following a 7.7-magnitude earthquake off the coast on October 25, killing 428 people and leaving 15,000 homeless.

The Indonesian archipelago has dozens of active volcanoes and straddles major tectonic fault lines known as the "ring of fire" from the Indian to the Pacific oceans.