The dead include a TV journalist, four high school students and their teacher who went to see Mount Sinaburg up close after being told it was becoming safer.
Only yesterday thousands of villagers were allowed to return to their homes on the slopes of the volcano, despite the fact it has been erupting sporadically for four months.
WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT
Tragedy: Relatives carry a coffin containing one victim at a nearby hospital. Officials fear the death toll will rise as the darkness and heat from the eruption hamper efforts to reach the mountain slopes
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Tragedy: Relatives carry a coffin containing one victim at a nearby hospital. Officials fear the death toll will rise as the darkness and heat from the eruption hamper efforts to reach the mountain slopes
At least three other people have been injured and officials fear the death toll will rise further.
Rescue workers have been hampered by darkness and cannot get closer to the affected areas because of the heat.
Authorities had evacuated more than 30,000 people, housing them in cramped tents, schools and public buildings, after the earlier eruptions which sent lava, searing gas and rocks from the 8,530ft peak.
They culminated today in a series of huge blasts which sent lava and pyroclastic flows up to three miles away, said officials.
Villagers were seen tending to the charred corpses of victims, themselves covered in thick grey as, as far as two miles from the peak.
Many in the rural island communities had been desperate to return to check on their homes and farms, presenting a dilemma for the government.
Harrowing: Rescue workers set about looking for bodies and survivors but their job was made more difficult by the intense heat, the dark and the threat of another eruption
Harrowing: Rescue workers set about looking for bodies and survivors but their job was made more difficult by the intense heat, the dark and the threat of another eruption
But hundreds of villagers also demanded to be moved safer areas because they were scared to go back.
Evacuee Naek Sembiring, one of 156 camping in a church, told The Jakarta Post two months ago that his entire village had agreed they would not return despite the situation being declared safe.
'We fear we might die,' he said. 'Our village is nearest to Mount Sinabung. In the event of an eruption where would we run to?'
Yesterday authorities allowed nearly 14,000 people living outside a three-mile danger zone to return home after volcanic activity decreased.
Others living close to the peak have been returning to their homes over the past four months despite the risk
After today's eruptions all those who had returned have been ordered to move back to evacuation centres.
Fear: Some residents had already told government officials they did not want to return to living in the shadow of the volcano
Deadly: Lava and pyroclastic flows have spread from the volcano, killing people up to two miles away
Deadly: Lava and pyroclastic flows have spread from the volcano, killing people up to two miles away
'The death toll is likely to rise as many people are reported still missing and the darkness hampered our rescue efforts,' said Lt. Col. Asep Sukarna, who led the rescue operation.
Indonesia is prone to seismic upheaval due to its location on the Pacific Ring of Fire, an arc of volcanoes and fault lines encircling the Pacific Basin.
Mount Sinabung had been dormant for 400 years until it erupted in 2010, killing at least two people and displacing 30,000 others.
It is now among about 130 active volcanoes in Indonesia and has sporadically erupted since September.
But despite volcanos being notoriously hard to predict, it is difficult to keep farmers away because the slopes of the mountains are highly fertile.
In 2010, 324 people were killed over two months when Indonesia's most volatile volcano, Mount Merapi, roared into life.
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