A bright meteorite streaking across western Germany had residents spellbound, with a fragment punching a hole in the roof of a house in Koblenz.

Authorities said the object struck a home in the Güls district around 7 p.m. local time (1800 GMT/UTC) on Sunday evening, leaving a football-sized hole in the roof. No one was injured.

What do we know about the Koblenz meteorite?

Police in Koblenz said the impact involved a burned-out celestial object that crashed into the building, adding that firefighters and police were on site and that there was no ongoing danger.

Emergency services reported a surge in calls as the meteor was seen across large parts of western Germany, including Rhineland-Palatinate, North Rhine-Westphalia, Hesse, Saarland, Baden-Württemberg and Lower Saxony. Witnesses described a bright fireball followed by a loud bang. There were also sightings in Belgium, France, the Netherlands and Switzerland.

Officials stressed there were no indications of a security incident or any connection to military activity.

Meteors are flashes of light created when meteoroids burn up in the Earth's atmosphere. Fragments that survive the descent and reach the ground are known as meteorites.

Such impacts are rare. In April 2023, several meteorite fragments fell near Elmshorn in northern Germany, including a 3.7-kilogram (8.15-pound) piece considered the heaviest found in the country in about a century.

Edited by: Roshni Majumdar