Philippine soldiers appealed to villagers to leave their homes and farms near a volcano today as more intense seismic activity raised the risk of a violent eruption.
Officials in the central province of Albay were trying to move 35,000 people from an five-mile danger zone on the southeast flank of Mount Mayon.
The most active of the country's 22 volcanoes has been belching ash and lava since July, and the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology says Mayon could erupt at any time.
The government's chief vulcanologist said the institute had recorded 108 earthquakes inside Mayon over 24 hours and that the crater had belched more than 12,000 tonnes of sulphur dioxide gas, more than double normal levels.
Around 25,000 people have been evacuated, but some villagers were refusing to abandon their livestock and vegetable plots for crowded schoolhouses, where families are being given shelter while they wait for Mayon to explode.
Local officials and soldiers appealed to stragglers to leave the danger zone. Disaster officials have said that police and soldiers will forcibly remove people who refuse to leave voluntarily.
Mayon has erupted around 50 times over the past four centuries, most recently in 2000 and 2001. The most destructive eruption was in 1841 when lava flows buried a town and killed 1,200 people.