News
NZ, Australia sends emergency planes to Tonga
New Zealand has sent an Air Force plane to Tonga to assess the damage caused by the weekend tsunami.
With power and communications cut, essentially isolating the island, New Zealand has decided to send a flight to find out how bad the tsunami was.
The eruption covered the Pacific islands in ash, but so far there haven’t been any reports of injuries or death.
But up to 80,000 people there could be affected.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says the tsunami had wreaked “significant damage”.
Satellite images suggest some outlying islands have been completely submerged by seawater
Information remains scarce and New Zealand and Australia are sending surveillance flights to assess the extent of the damage.
The New Zealand Defence Force tweeted that an aircraft had left to “assist in an initial impact assessment of the area and low-lying islands”.
The eruption was so loud it could be heard in New Zealand, some 2,383km (1,481 miles) from Tonga.
Earlier, the French news agency AFP corrected a report that said there had been another major volcanic eruption on Tonga. AFP now says they cannot verify the report.