(EFE News) -- Residents of several villages in the Russian region of
Irkutsk watched, with a mixture of awe and fear, the fall of an
enormous luminous object in this southern Siberian area. Scientists
have identified the object as a meteorite.

Several witnesses to the skyfall immediately sounded the alarm and
contacted the Institute of Solar Physics of the Western Siberian
Department of the Russian Academy of Science. In turn, the Emergency
Situations Ministry was notified due to the commotion that the
object's fall caused among the region's population.

According to residents of the villages of Bodaibo, Balajniniski, Mama
and Kropotkin, the alleged meteorite left a long trail in the sky
before crashing violently against the taiga or Siberian forest.

Witnesses some 100 to 150 kilometers away from the point of impact
noted that when the object collided, it caused a huge tremor similar
to that of an earthquake, amid a deafening noise. They also remarked
that following the impact, sporadic flashes of light were seen in the
forested hills. Guelii Zherebtsov of the aforementioned Institute of
Solar Physics noted that the celestial body must have been a very
large meteorite. He added that preparatios are being amde to explore
the impact site, located between Baljninski and Kiajta.

This meteor strike was reminiscent of the Tungunska incident, which
occurred in another Siberian region located to the north. On June 30,
1908, an unknown object crashed against the taiga and razed thousands
of hectares of forest. The alleged meteorite--the explanation given
by conventional scientists--had a mass of approximately 100,000 tons
and impacted with a force of 40 tons of TNT: 2000 times the power of
the Hiroshima A-bomb. The Tungunska object, identified by some as an
extraterrestrial spacecraft, razed nearly 2150 sq. km of forest and,
as occurred with today's phenomenon, lightning and strange lights
were seen at its epicenter hundreds of kilometers away.