IGX

MOSCOW — Bright objects, apparently debris from a meteor, streaked through the sky in western Siberia early Friday, accompanied by a thunderous shock wave that damaged buildings across a vast territory. Russia’s Interior Ministry said more than 1,000 people were injured, 200 of them children, mostly from shards of glass that shattered when the meteor entered the atmosphere.

Many of the injuries were reported in the city of Chelyabinsk, about 950 miles east of Moscow, in a region where there are many factories for defense, including nuclear weapons production. But there was no indication of any damage that resulted in any radiation leaks, officials said.

Russian experts believe the blast was caused by a 10-ton meteor known as a bolide, which created a powerful shock wave when it reached the Earth’s atmosphere, the Russian Academy of Sciences said in a statement. Scientists believe the bolide exploded and evaporated at a height of about 20 to 30 miles above the Earth’s surface, but that small fragments — meteorites — may have reached the ground, the statement said.

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