february cuba meteor 2013
The plume left by an exploding meteor above Cuba, on the same day as another meteor exploded above Chelyabinsk, southern Russia
The celestial body that fell, and ended with a large explosion that shook houses in the central area of Cuba today, coincided with a rain of meteorite fragments that injured 1,000 people in the Urals region of Russia.

According to the morning news report on a Cuban TV channel from Rodas, Cienfuegos, a region in the center of the country, a very bright light about the size of a bus was seen in the sky and it then exploded. One of the eyewitnesses, a fisherman, told the news channel that "about 8pm local time on Wednesday, I saw a light that crossed the sky and then turned into a very large flame, bigger than the sun, and after about 3 or 4 minutes we heard an explosion".

"The evidence seems to suggest that it was a fireball or bolide, fragments of rock and metal that enter the atmosphere at high speed" said Marcos Rodriguez, a resident of the region who presented himself as an expert on the phenomenon. A woman also claimed that the explosion shook the roof of her house. According to the news report, specialists were looked for fragments that might have fallen to earth.

Today, about 1,000 people were injured when meteorite fragments fell on the Urals region of Russia. The majority of injuries were caused by glass being blow out of buildings by the shockwave, according to the Russian Ministry of the Interior.

Translation from the original by Sott.net