Posted on Thursday 20 September 2007
It sounds like the start of a science fiction movie. Meteorite lands in a small village. Suddenly the villagers start falling ill. And then….
In this the case the incident is real and the incident occured in a village in Peru. The AFP reports that villagers in Southern Peru have fallen sick several days after a meteorite struck near their village. Even police officers visiting the area became ill.
Around midday Saturday, villagers were startled by an explosion and a fireball that many were convinced was an airplane crashing near their remote village, located in the high Andes department of Puno in the Desaguadero region, near the border with Bolivia.
Residents complained of headaches and vomiting brought on by a “strange odor,” local health department official Jorge Lopez told Peruvian radio RPP.
Seven policemen who went to check on the reports also became ill and had to be given oxygen before being hospitalized, Lopez said.
Rescue teams and experts were dispatched to the scene, where the meteorite left a 100-foot-wide (30-meter-wide) and 20-foot-deep (six-meter-deep) crater, said local official Marco Limache.
Another article about these strange turn of events says that scientists have obtained samples of the meteorite to study and determine what if anything is in the meteorite that could be making the villagers sick.
Update: BBC article says dozens are ill and a bull is dead. A local engineer says no radiation has been detected from the crater.
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Original post by HealthNewsBlog.com
