MOSCOW, February 15 (RIA Novosti) – A meteorite that injured scores of people in central Russia when it fell to earth early on Friday plunged into a lake in the Chelyabinsk region, the regional governor said.
“The meteorite that passed over the Chelyabinsk region fell into a body of water 1km from the city of Chebarkul,” said a statement posted on the website of Chelyabinsk governor, Mikhail Yurevich.
Almost 500 people were injured when fragments from what Russia’s Emergencies Ministries says was a single meteorite fell across central Russia. Most people were hurt by shattering glass. Five people have been hospitalized, with the condition of three of them described as “grave” by an Interior Ministry spokesman.
Emergency officials in west Kazakhstan also said on Friday they were searching for two unidentified objects that fell in the country’s Aktobe Province.
Fragments from the meteorites are so far confirmed to have fallen in central Russia’s Chelyabinsk, Tyumen, Kurgan and Sverdlovsk regions, as well in north Kazakhstan, which neighbors Russia.