Hundreds of villagers have fallen ill from mysterious gases that spewed from a crater after a meteorite landed in south-eastern Peru, but no radiation has been detected, officials say.

Scores of residents of the farming village of Carancas began vomiting and complaining of headaches and dizziness after the meteor struck the area on Saturday, creating a crater eight metres deep and 20 metres wide.

The BBC reported that 600 people required treatment after the object fell from space and that one of Peru’s leading geologists, Honorio Campoblanco, had called on the authorities to stop people going near the crash site.

The mayor of the nearby town of Desaguadero, Nestor Quispe, said about 200 sick villagers were being treated and Carancas residents feared they might suffer long-term side effects. “Villagers are afraid that other space objects could fall,” Mr Quispe said.

An engineer at the Peruvian Nuclear Energy Institute, Renan Ramirez, said tests had found no evidence of radiation.

The illness might have been triggered by sulfur, arsenic or other toxins that may have melted in the heat produced by the meteorite strike, Mr Ramirez said.

“It is a conventional meteorite that, when it struck, produced gases by fusing with elements of the terrain,” he said.

The director of the Health Ministry in the Puno region, Jorge Lopez, said none of the patients was in a serious condition but they would have to undergo blood and neurological tests as a precaution in three to six months.

Police have cordoned off the crater, but Mr Lopez said that despite wearing a mask when he approached the crater, the fumes irritated his nose and throat.