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The trail of a falling object is seen above a residential apartment block in Chelyabinsk, Russia, on February 15/AFP

World

Meteor strike in Russia hurts over 500

The meteor explosion appears to be one of the most stunning cosmic events above Russia since the 1908 Tunguska Event, when a massive blast most scientists blame on an asteroid or a comet impact ripped through Siberia.

“I am scratching my head to think of anything in recorded history when that number of people have been indirectly injured by an object like this… it’s very, very rare to have human casualties,” Robert Massey, deputy executive secretary of Britain’s Royal Astronomical Society (RAS), told AFP.

But he stressed that he saw “absolutely no connection” between the Chelyabinsk event and asteroid 2012 DA 14, which was to skim the Earth later on Friday at a distance of around 17,200 miles (27,700 kilometres).

With the meteor already becoming a leading trend on Twitter, locals posted amateur footage on YouTube showing men swearing in surprise and fright, and others grinding their cars to a halt.

“First I thought it was a plane falling, but there was no sound from the engine… after a moment a powerful explosion went off,” said witness Denis Laskov.

“In a lot of the houses on our street the windows were blown out,” he told state television.

Footage is viewable on: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_nOaRpF0DJk.

The Chelyabinsk region is Russia’s industrial heartland, filled with smoke-chugging factories and other huge facilities that include a nuclear power plant and the massive Mayak atomic waste storage and treatment centre.

A spokesman for Rosatom, the Russian nuclear energy state corporation, said that its operations remained unaffected.

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The emergencies ministry said radiation levels in the region also did not change and that 20,000 rescue workers had been dispatched to help the injured and locate those requiring help.

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