Huge Meteorite Crater Deemed a Hoax

A telephone company Monday said it had dreamed up a purported meteorite strike in Latvia as a publicity stunt.

A spokesman for the firm was quoted by the Leta news agency as saying the hoax had been meant to "inspire Latvia" and give the world a rest from the economic crisis headlines about the Baltic state's economic crisis.

He said the firm would reimburse the cash-strapped emergency services who had rushed to the scene.

But Interior Minister Linda Murniece dubbed the stunt a "cynical mockery."

Latvian authorities said the cost of calling out firefighters, police, the army and scientists was at least 2,000 lats ($4,250).

Earlier Monday, police had warned that they would launch a criminal investigation if the alleged meteorite strike near the small northern Latvian town of Mazsalaca was a hoax.

It was not immediately clear if any charges would be filed against the company for wasting emergency services' time and money, following its admission.

Inga Vetere, a spokeswoman for the Baltic nation's State Fire and Rescue Service had earlier told AFP that firefighters had been called out at 5:30 pm (1530 GMT) on Sunday by residents who said something had fallen from the sky into the ground and set a field on fire.

"We concluded that the impact must have come from the air and this is why we believe it could have been a meteorite," she said.

But experts who rushed to the scene cast doubt on claims that the 10-meter-wide (33-foot-wide) crater had been caused by a meteorite, noting spade marks, and suggested that the flames may have been caused by molten metal being poured into the crater.

The purported meteorite hit just a day before the Latvian government approved an austerity budget for 2010.

As it struggles to keep to the terms of an international rescue package for its floundering economy, Latvia has repeatedly pared public services to the bone and slashed state-sector wages, with emergency services among those hardest hit by the belt-tightening drive.