Twitter abuzz after meteor shower

Moscow, Feb 16:

has been abuzz with tweets on

. The online space was jostled with messages full of words like "fear" and "panic" as well as numerous other expletives, which also abounded in most eyewitness videos posted on YouTube.

Although many Russians tried to keep up a brave face, some of in the hours following landfall admitted some weaknesses too.

"Everybody cleared out from our office except one dude. Asked why, he said, I need me some coffee first," Twitter user @ma1ice_ma1ice wrote an hour after the celestial body streaked the sky over the region's eponymous capital, Chelyabinsk, a city of 1.1 million in the southern Ural Mountains.

Although no deaths were reported as a consequence of the meteorite, but police said by early evening that nearly 1,000 people had been hurt, the majority of them injured by glass shattered by the shock wave.

"Yes, I'm home, shaking all over. Horrible panic here, everybody's leaving the city," wrote @DashkaBulanova.

The panic, however, was far from universal: "I was asleep, heard the blast and went back to sleep," tweeted @Nastyayas.

"That's some original wake-up call right there, when your door gets blown away by the blast wave," wrote the less lucky user @R_T_S_.

Some took it better than others. "We were dancing, suddenly a flash of light and a horrible blast, we run up on stage in a panic, and the teacher's all calm: 'Don't worry, it's just a meteorite'," reported @caxapoook.

The meteorite also spawned a dozen Russian-language Twitter accounts of its own, all offering more lowbrow humor, with lines like, "Looking to meet earthlings. No Bruce Willises" - a reference to the Hollywood star's crusade against space debris in "Armageddon".

IANS/RIA Novosti