400 injured after Russia meteor crash
2013-02-15 11:00
Moscow - A meteor streaked across the sky above Russia's Ural Mountains on Friday morning, causing sharp explosions and injuring more than 400 people, many of them hurt by broken glass.
"There was panic. People had no idea what was happening. Everyone was going around to people's houses to check if they were okay," said Sergey Hametov, a resident of Chelyabinsk, about 1 500km east of Moscow, the biggest city in the affected region.
"We saw a big burst of light then went outside to see what it was and we heard a really loud thundering sound," he said.
Fragments of the meteor fell in a thinly populated area of the Chelyabinsk region, the Emergency Ministry said in a statement.
Interior Ministry spokesperson Vadim Kolesnikov said more than 400 people had sought medical treatment after the blasts, and at least three had been hospitalised in serious condition. Many of the injuries were from glass broken by the explosions.
Kolsenikov also said about 600m² of a roof at a zinc factory had collapsed.
Reports conflicted on what exactly happened in the clear skies. A spokesperson for the Emergency Ministry, Irina Rossius, said that there was a meteor shower, but another ministry representative, Elena Smirnikh, was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying it was a single meteorite.
Amateur video broadcast on Russian television showed an object speeding across the sky about 09:20 local time (03:20 GMT), leaving a thick white contrail and an intense flash.
Russian news reports noted that the meteor hit less than a day before the asteroid 2012 DA14 is to make the closest recorded pass of an asteroid - about 28 000km. There was no immediate demonstrable connection.
- SAPA
