Disaster management agency Conred issued a nationwide orange alert, the second highest, and warned locals to be prepared as the eruptions could create further pyroclastic flows and billowing ash clouds.

Conred urged people to keep their windows and doors closed and lessons have been cancelled in schools close to the volcano.

Fuego is located just 16km (10 miles) west of Antigua, a city popular with tourists, who travel to the Unesco World Heritage Site to admire its colonial-era architecture.

More than 200 people were killed when Fuego erupted in 2018, many of them caught in the fast-flowing pyroclastic flows which raced down the Las Lajas ravine.