Galina Zaglumyonova was woken in her flat in central Chelyabinsk by an enormous explosion that blew in the balcony windows and shattered clay pots containing her few houseplants. When she jumped out of bed she could see a huge vapour trail hanging in the morning sky and hear the wail of car alarms from the street below. “I didn’t understand what was going on,” said Zaglumyonova. “There was a big explosion and then a series of little explosions. My first thought was that it was a plane crash.” What she had actually witnessed were the death throes of a ten-tonne meteorite that plunged to Earth in a series of fireballs just after sunrise. Officials put the number of people injured at almost 1,200, with more than 40 taken to hospital – most as a result of flying glass shattered by the sonic boom created by the meteorite’s descent. There were no reported deaths. The meteorite entered the atmosphere travelling at a speed of at least 33,000mph and broke up into chunks between 18 and 32 miles above the ground, according to a statement from the Russian Academy of Sciences. The event caused panic in Chelyabinsk, a city of more than one million people to the south of Russia’s Ural mountains, as mobile phone networks swiftly became jammed by the volume of calls. Amateur video footage from the area, often peppered with the obscene language of frightened observers,