MOUNT MERAPI, Indonesia Searing gas avalanched down an Indonesian volcano with a thunderous roar, torching houses and trees and incinerating villagers as they fled Mount Merapi's worst eruption in a century. Dozens of bodies found today raised the death toll to 122.

The injured with clothes, blankets and even mattresses fused to their skin by the 1,400 degree Fahrenheit heat were carried away on stretchers following the first big explosion just before midnight.

Soldiers joined rescue operations in hardest-hit Bronggang, a village nine miles from the crater, pulling at least 78 bodies from homes and streets blanketed by ash up to one-foot deep.

The volcano, in the heart of densely populated Java island, has erupted scores of times, killing more than 1,500 people in the last century alone. But tens of thousands of people live on its rolling slopes, drawn to soil made fertile by molten lava and volcanic debris.

Its latest activity started Oct. 26. After today's explosion said by volcanologists to be the biggest since the 1870s officials announced by loudspeaker that the mountain's danger zone had been expanded to 12 miles from the crater.

Previously, villages like Bronggang were still considered to be in the “safe zone.”

GUASIMAL, Cuba A state airliner filled with Cubans and travelers from Europe and Latin America crashed and burst into flames in a mountainous area after declaring an emergency and losing contact with air traffic controllers, the island's worst air disaster in more than 20 years.All 40 Cubans and 28 foreigners aboard died, authorities said today.AeroCaribbean Flight 883 was en route from the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba to the capital when it reported an emergency at 5:42 p.m. local time Thursday, then lost contact with air traffic controllers. It went down near Guasimal, a village in Sancti Spiritus province, carrying 61 passengers and a crew of seven.Cuba's Civil Aviation Authority issued a statement hours later saying there were no survivors. It released a list of passengers that included nine Argentines, seven Mexicans, three Dutch citizens, two Germans, two Austrians, a French citizen, an Italian, a Spaniard, a Venezuelan and a Japanese. The seven member crew were all Cuban, as were 33 passengers.A photo posted on the website of the local newspaper showed a large piece of the plane in flames, with rescue workers standing around it.