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Mount Sinabung on the Indonesian island of Sumatra is a 2,600-metre-high volcano which has been spewing molten lava and suffocating ash since September last year.

So extreme is the volcano at the moment that last week it erupted over 200 times.

Many of these incredible images show the village of Namanteran which has been blanketed in ash by the stratovolcano - a term describing the mountain's layers of ash and lava.

One picture shows a farmer desperately trying to clean her crops which have been covered in layer upon layer of thick, black ash and mud.

So thick is the ash which has descended on the nearby settlements that it is hard to spot any green in the ruined fields.

Another image shows a family desperately trying to rebuild a house that collapsed when a particularly heavy plume of ash fell on top of it.

Mount Sinabung is one of 127 active volcanos in Indonesisa and became active in 2010 after hundreds of years of dormancy.

The deadly volcano lies on the Pacific Ring of Fire, a fault line in the Pacific Ocean which is plagued by near-constant volcanic activity.

Tens of thousands of villagers have fled the area after experts became alarmed at the furious frequency of explosions coming from the volcano.

The level of ash has turned the settlement of Sigarang Garang, in the Karo District, into a near-colourless wasteland with the usually tropical landscape resembling something more akin to a war zone.

While few human casualties have been reported due to the evacuations, the region's rich wildlife has not been so lucky.

Roads are littered with the corpses of dogs and birds that have been killed by the ash which has been descending from the sky.