Eyewitnesses watched a fiery ball fall from the sky and smash into the remote Andean plain near the Bolivian border on Saturday, local media reported.
The crater left by the object is 65ft wide and 20ft deep
When villagers went to investigate, they encountered fetid, noxious gases, according to local health officials.
Jorge Lopez, director of the health department in the southern state of Puno, 800 miles south of Lima, said at least 200 people had become ill after inhaling "toxic" fumes emanating from the resulting crater.
It [the object] is buried in the earth," local resident Heber Mamani told the BBC.
"That is why we are asking for an analysis because we are worried for our people. They are afraid. A bull is dead and some other animals are already sick," he said.
Three geologists from Peru's Geophysics Institute are on their way to the site to determine whether it was, in fact, a meteorite, and are expected to present a report on the incident on Thursday.
Sounds scary to me! It's like War Of The Worlds and Independence rolled into one. I just hope that on Thursday, they tell us it was just a cow that exploded due to an overload of methane gas and that's why everyone's feeling sick.
Source1 & Source2
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