The South-Eastern side of Mt Etna in Sicily is slowly sliding into the sea and could collapse suddenly, causing a tsunami in the Mediterranean, experts have warned.

The online scientific magazine Science Advances reported that scientists gathered data from seafloor instruments that tracked the movement of the volcano’s underwater slopes over time.

For most of the 15-month period they studied, nothing happened. But during an 8-day period in May 2017, the southeastern flank moved four centimetres to the east.

The experts could not tell if and when this slow-motion landslide could become a total collapse, but they noted that several volcanoes had collapsed without warning across the world, causing devastating tsunamis.

A large part of the eastern side of Mt Etna is believed to have collapsed some 7,000 years ago, causing a major tsunami in the central and eastern Mediterranean.

Read more about the current research here