Meteor explodes over Russia; about 1,100 injured

Some meteorite fragments fell in a reservoir outside the town of Chebarkul. The crash left an eight-meter (26-foot) -wide crater in the ice.

The shock wave blew in an estimated 100,000 square meters (more than 1 million square feet) of glass, according to city officials, who said 3,000 buildings in the city were damaged. At one zinc factory, part of the roof collapsed.

The Interior Ministry said about 1,100 people sought medical care after the shock wave and 48 of them were hospitalized. Most of the injuries were caused by flying glass, officials said.

There was no immediate word on any deaths or anyone struck by space fragments.

Meteors typically cause sizeable sonic booms when they enter the atmosphere because they are traveling so much faster than the speed of sound. Injuries on the scale reported Friday, however, are extraordinarily rare.

"I went to see what that flash in the sky was about,'' recalled resident Marat Lobkovsky. ``And then the window glass shattered, bouncing back on me. My beard was cut open, but not deep. They patched me up. It's OK now.''

Another resident, Valya Kazakov, said some elderly women in his neighborhood started crying out that the world was ending.

Russian-language hashtags for the meteorite quickly shot up into Twitter's top trends.

Lessons had just started at Chelyabinsk schools

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