Proton rocket debris fell in China

Photo:ufosight.comWhen three unidentified flying objects came hurtling from the skies, terrified villagers in China's Heilongjiang province thought they were under alien attack, ibtimes.co.uk reports.

Local residents were terror-struck when a fireball screamed to Earth, shanghaiist.com reported.

One "large metal ball with a jagged-edged layer" that crash-landed on a vegetable farm had a diameter of 70 centimetres and weighed around 40 kilograms, according to the website.

Two neighbouring villages also reported similar 'UFO' crash landings around the same time. The incident scared the villagers who thought it was an alien attack.

However, the falling objects could be from a Russian communications satellite that crashed nine minutes after take-off outside Kazakhstan, around the time the alleged UFOs were sighted.

Russian space agency head Oleg Ostapenko believes that the satellite exploded due to the failure of the third stage's steering engines, Russian news agency ITAR-Tass reported.

Some reports claim that the fireball sighted in China were actually debris from the exploding Proton-M rocket.

The three blast sites with metallic debris have been blocked for further investigation by local authorities. No casualties have been reported so far.