Tongans deafened by volcanic blast as they fled for safety

, the blast in the small island nation was so deafening that fleeing families could only wave at their loved ones to run.

"The first explosion ... our ears were ringing and we couldn't even hear each other, so all we do is pointing to our families to get up, get ready to run," local journalist Marian Kupu told Reuters in one of the first eyewitness accounts to emerge from the South Pacific nation. "We evacuated and then we, all our families, were just running away from the Kolovai area, because the Kolovai is right beside the seashore," said Kupu, explaining the chaotic scenes just outside the capital Nuku'alofa on Saturday evening ., sent tsunami waves some 15m high crashing ashore on one small island and badly damaged villages, resorts and many buildings on others. It also cut domestic and overseas communications, severing an undersea internet cable.

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center has said the force of the eruption was estimated to be the equivalent of five to 10 megatons of TNT, or more than 500 times that of the nuclear bomb the United States dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima at the end of World War Two. Five days later communications have only been partially restored and eyewitness accounts have begun to be reported.

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