MOSCOW, April 7 (RIA Novosti) – Russia’s Emergencies Ministry rejected media reports on Sunday that a new meteorite had crashed in the country’s northwest.
Some media reports said on Sunday eye-witnesses saw the fall of an unidentified flying object near the town of Tosno in the Leningrad Region.
“No facts of the fall of a meteorite have been confirmed,” the ministry’s spokeswoman said.
Rescuers from the Emergencies Ministry went to the site of the presumed meteor crash after a call by eye-witnesses but did not find anything, she said.
Meteor mania started in Russia in February after a meteorite exploded over the Urals city of Chelyabinsk.
The meteorite slammed into the Urals region on February 15, landing with a massive boom that blew out windows and damaged thousands of buildings around Chelyabinsk, injuring 1,200 people in the area. Health officials say 52 people were hospitalized.
NASA estimates the meteorite was roughly 15 meters (50 feet) in diameter when it struck the Earth's atmosphere, travelling faster than the speed of sound, and exploded in a fireball brighter than the sun. The meteor was the largest object to enter the planet’s atmosphere in 83 years.
