PARIS, Oct 13: A Russian meteorite that crashed two weeks ago in Siberia, but whose existence is being played down by Russian authorities, is said to be “one of the great events of the century” by French space specialist Antonella Barucci.

Miss Barucci, a meteorite specialist employed by the Paris Observatory said that the Russian metorite, which fell October 3 in a remote region of Siberia “could be the largest and most important meteorite to fall on earth since the last one that fell in 1908, also on Siberia.”

The new Siberian meteorite has also the added attraction, moreover, that according to the few scientists who are privy with what happened, that in fact’s it’s the large fragment of a star, which means that the object that fell to earth is possibly even more of a rarity than has heretofore been thought.

Although Russian authorities are attempting to play down the importance of the event, eyewitnesses who saw the fragment fall out of the sky at Bodaibo in the region of Irkutsk near a gold mine, say that they saw a large rock fall out of the sky and then felt the earth tremble.

One of the Siberian gold-diggers, Alexander Doroshok, said that “suddenly the sky turned turquoise, there was a large flash followed by an explosion that produced a sharp whistling sound.” A little while later, Doroshok and other gold diggers from Bodaibo say they came across a large crater in the middle of a forest where several trees had burned.

But Russian authorities are playing down the whole thing, that is, at least until they themselves can make their way to the region of Irkutsk where Russian scientists are not all that certain that the incident is such a major event after all. Kirilli Levy, a director of the Academy of Sciences at Irkutsk, says for his part that “the seismic vibrations produced by the impact were best comparable to those of a minor, and average, local earthquake.”

The same Mr Levy adds, moreover, that he’s unwilling to say anything more until he himself has had a chance to visit the site of the supposed crash.