The eruption of a long-dormant volcano in Eritrea, northeastern Africa, was disrupting air traffic Tuesday and forced U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to cut short a three-nation African tour.

The Dubbi volcano erupted on Sunday night following a series of minor earthquakes, spewing ash up to eight miles into the air, Reuters reports. The eruption was its first in 150 years.

Dubbi is located 219 miles north of the Eritrean capital, Asmara, and 146 miles east of the Ethiopian city of Mekelle.

U.S. officials told Reuters that Ethiopia was considering shutting down Addis Ababa's main international airport as the ash cloud headed toward the capital, though this was not confirmed by Ethiopia's Civil Aviation Authority.

Routes to northern Ethiopia, neighboring Djibouti and the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, had been affected, Ethiopia Airlines — Africa’s most profitable airline, which would be worst-hit if the Addis Ababa airport closed — told Bloomberg.

Germany's Lufthansa, meanwhile, said that it had canceled a flight out of Asmara on Monday and another flight into Addis Ababa.

According to Israel's weather service, the cloud was moving in the direction of Saudi Arabia and Jordan.

The BBC broadcast an insightful interview with Peggy Hellweg, a seismologist at the University of California, on the likely reasons for the eruption.

Meanwhile, an independent earthquake monitoring website — earthquake-report.com — said it might in fact be a nearby volcano, called Nabro, erupting.