MOSCOW, Feb. 16 (Xinhua) — About 1,200 people have been known injured and many buildings damaged since a meteor exploded on Friday morning, raining fireballs over Russia’s central Urals region, the Interior Ministry said.
Most of the injured, among them 200 children, suffered cuts by broken glass from thousands of shattered windows during the very rare meteorite explosion, according to the ministry.
Residents in the region uploaded videos of a fireball cutting through the sky. The fireball, travelling at a speed of 30 km per second according to Russian space agency Roscosmos, had blazed across the horizon.
The main impact happened 80 km from the town of Satki in Chelyabinsk region. It has not been confirmed whether the damage was caused by the rock’s impact or an airwave caused by its explosion in the lower layers of the atmosphere.
“What happened over the Urals region was not a meteor shower, as was reported earlier,” Emergency Situations Ministry spokeswoman Yelena Smirnykh told the Interfax news agency. “It was a single meteor which burned up as it passed through the lower layers of the Earth’s atmosphere.”
