Kasereka said the Nyamulagira volcano had begun to erupt at around 2000 GMT on Monday. Any lava flow would likely affect the Virunga national park, he said.

The Nyamulagira volcano erupted in July 2002, spewing lava 200 metres (600 feet) into the air.

The larger, neighbouring Nyiragongo volcano erupted in January 2002, pouring lava over much of Goma, sending hundreds of thousands of people fleeing for their lives, and compounding the misery of the border city then caught in the midst of a regional African war.

Kasereka and international peacekeepers stationed in the area said they could see a red glow reflected off the sky above the volcano.

"We will have to talk to the U.N. because we can't go and have a look yet due to the security situation," Kasereka said.

At least five people have been killed and dozens more injured since Saturday when soldiers loyal to a renegade general seized the town of Sake, just 20 km (13 miles) from Goma.

U.N. ground forces and helicopter gunships went into action against the rebels on Monday to prevent them advancing on the town.

We have checked with local police and fire departments. While they are not reporting anything out of the ordinary, they are investigating.

The U.S. Geological Survey didn't report any earthquakes.

Channel 8 Eyewitness News will have more information as soon as it becomes available.

News 3 contacted Nellis Air Force Base. They said take offs and landing on the base are running normal, but say they too have received calls.

We even checked with an earthquake expert that says nothing has registered in the area. We will continue digging deeper and let you know when we find out more.

A Dyfed-Powys Police spokesman said: "It was apparent that what is believed to be a tornado had struck parts of the village

"Commercial and residential premises, vehicles and caravans were damaged."

Kevin Walsh, the owner of a bungalow which had its chimney ripped off by high winds, said: "At quarter past one this morning I heard a rumble coming, didn't know what it was, and then it hit the house.

"The house shook, I heard a crash. I came outside and found the (chimney) stack here on the ground.

"It hit us first and then sliced a path through the village.

"Across the road there's a house there whose roof has been taken off. Further down another roof's been taken off. "

Wynford Davies, whose house is on the main road through the village, said: "There was an amazing bang at about 1.15am - it was like a train running out of control.

Upturned caravan
Caravan were upturned and trees were brought down

"Within about four minutes it had gone. I rushed outside to see the chimney had been taken off the roof and it was on the road."

He added he believed thousands of pounds worth of damage had been caused to his house.

Wayne Clarke who lives on the village's Maes Y Fechan estate said: "One of my bedroom windows was blown in but luckily no-one was in the room at the time.

"The only way I can describe the noise was it was like thunder. Tiles were blown off my roof, four of my neighbours' cars were damaged."

The main road through Bow Street - the A487 - was closed for four hours while the properties were made safe and the highways authority cleared debris

Council highways officer Andy Dunn said: "A number of cars have been damaged with falling debris.

"A caravan's been turned over, part of a roof's been taken off and I believe there's a few trees which have fallen across the railway line from Machynlleth to Aberystwyth."

British Transport Police said a railway bridge has been damaged and about half a mile of track through the village has been littered with debris.

It is thought the line between Aberystwyth and Borth could be closed for much of the day.

A spokesperson for the Met Office said it was too early to confirm whether it was a tornado that had hit the village.

A spokesperson said: "It's very difficult to tell at this stage - we really need to see the impact in the daylight.

"It often leaves a trail mark if it is a tornado. It's certainly a possibility."

Police in SA said they took calls from just after 8pm (CST) on Monday from Renmark and Loxton in the Riverland, most Adelaide suburbs and then from people living south of the city, with reports of something looking like a fireball in the sky.

In Victoria, callers to ABC Radio, from Bendigo to Horsham in the state's north-west down to Colac in the south-west, reported seeing a bright green coloured object shooting westward in the sky.

"It was green like a meteorite or shooting star," he told ABC Radio.

"It was really pretty bright and you could see something else coming down as well, but what it was I don't know."

Monty from Kaniva, near the SA border, said the object was bright and appeared to have debris trailing behind it.

"It was before sunset and normally you only see those things in the dark," Monty said.

"The trail hung in the sky for at least 15 minutes afterward like a jet stream."

Allen at Colac said: "I was sitting at the Shell servo at Colac and I was looking to the north and you could see the green light with the tail thing behind it."

Brian, who owns a farm at Laanecoorie, west of Bendigo, said he and his wife were outside when they saw the comet-like object streak across the sky.

"We looked up and there was a green comet-like thing dropping out of the western sky," Brian said.

"It dropped over the trees at the back of our property and it was making a tail as it went down."

An SA Police spokesman said later that the Bureau of Meteorology confirmed the object was a meteor

Scientists Dr Gilbert Price and Dr Gregory Webb believe understanding how the prehistoric big dry caused extinctions could help predict how and if animals battling current climate change will survive.

The QUT research into the giant Australian marsupials and reptiles and the impact of climate change will be published in the December issue of the Australian Journal of Earth Sciences.

Dr Price and Dr Webb studied the fossil-rich Darling Downs area of south-east Queensland with the help of palaeontologists from the Queensland Museum and an amateur local fossil hunter, Ian Sobbe.

Dr Price said what the team unearthed showed that giant kangaroos and other large wildlife that roamed the area in the late Pleistocene age were drought-stressed when they died.

"What makes this research so relevant to climate change theories today is that the profile of the fossil kangaroo populations is identical to that of a modern drought-stressed kangaroo mob," he said.

"It provides, for the first time, evidence which suggests that the megafauna kangaroos were greatly affected by a series of catastrophic droughts.

"These animals of the prehistoric Australian bush were the largest of their time and included gigantic wombats the size of cars, kangaroos that reached almost 2.5 metres tall, and massive emus and goannas.

"There's nothing we can do now to save these animals - they're all extinct.

"But if we can understand how those animals responded to the massive droughts and climate change events of the past, we might be able to go some way in predicting the effects of future climate changes and its impact on the way that we manage and conserve the precious habitats and wildlife of the Australian bush."

Dr Price said the layers of fossils in the dig area at the Darling Downs were not consistent with some theories that humans had wiped out megafauna.

"Some scientists believe in the 'blitzkrieg' megafauna extinction hypothesis which blames humans for over-hunting these giant marsupials," he said.

"If that was the case, these fossils dating back thousands of years would show the animals dying out at the same point in time. But they don't. These layers of fossils buried at a single site under the Darling Downs show a progressive, three-stage extinction over time that relates to periods of climate change."

Dr Webb said the research had unearthed indicators that the Darling Downs had been a semi-arid environment 40,000 years ago, rather than sub-tropical or tropical.

"Sedimentological information shows that the Darling Downs was experiencing repeating cycles of wet and dry conditions, resulting in droughts and periodic flash flooding from storms, during the time when the megafauna populations were declining," he said.

"The research found no evidence of humans being involved in the accumulation of fossils in the catchment at the time of deposition, but is perfectly consistent with their decline being caused by increasing aridity.

"So it's most likely that Australia's giant kangaroos and other megafauna in this area were driven to extinction by the hands of Mother Nature."

Dr Price, who received his PhD this year for his research, and Dr Webb are both researchers with QUT's School of Natural Resource Sciences and QUT's Institute of Sustainable Resources.