Mystery sickness after Peru meteor
Updated on 19 September 2007
Hundreds of Peruvians are being treated for vomiting, after visiting a crater apparently left by a meteorite that crash-landed over the weekend.
After hearing a loud noise, the townspeople went to investigate and found a giant crater 20m wide and 7m deep.
"We've examined about 100 people who got near to the meteorite crater who have vomiting and headaches because of gasses coming out of there," Jorge Lopez, health director in Puno said.
Experts from Peru's Geophysical Institute are on their way to the area near Lake Titicaca, 800 miles south of the capital, Lima, to verify what sort of object came crashing down from space. Villagers initially thought it might have been a plane.
"We ourselves went near the crater and now we've got irritated throats and itching noses," Lopez said.
Geologists there say that the reaction between the elements in a meteorite and the Earth's surface can generate gases that can later fade away.
Meteorites are reported to have fallen in 2002 and 2004 in southern Peru.
