Jabal al-Tair Island

Dschazirat Jabal at- Tair (Arabic جزيرة جبل الطير Dschazīrat Jabal at- Tair, DMG Ǧazīrat Ǧabal aṭ - Tayr, Bird Mountain Island ') is a small island in the Red Sea near the Indian Ocean. On the island there is an active volcano, the Jabal at- Ta'ir / جبل الطائر / Ǧabal aṭ Ta ʾ ir ( alternative spellings: Jabal -al- Tair, Jebel at Tair ).

The island is about four kilometers long, a total of about eleven square kilometers in size, has a maximum height of 244 m above sea level and is located at the coordinates 15.55 ° North and 41.82 ° East. It is located about 115 kilometers off the coast of Yemen, about 100 kilometers from the port city of al - Hudaydah. It is a stratovolcano, composed of basalts and rises from a depth of 1,200 meters. The island is mostly covered by solidified lava recent.

September 30, 2007, 16:00 GMT clock, a volcanic eruption took place on the island, which was one of the ships observed a nearby fleet of Standing NATO Maritime Group. Eyewitnesses reported that the whole island aglow. The island was occupied at this time by a military garrison of the Yemeni army, otherwise uninhabited. The government of Yemen asked NATO for assistance in the search for survivors. It killed at least four Yemeni soldiers, 49 people were rescued. Already throughout the month there had been earthquakes on the island that had reached two days before the outbreak of the peak with a quake measuring 7.3 on the Richter scale. The island is covered since the outbreak entirely of lava, ash and rubble, the western part of the island has sunk into the sea.

The last known eruption of the volcano previously had taken place in 1883.