3 October 2002

Dateline Madrid --

A Spanish scientist says terrorists may be to blame for giant blocks of ice which fall from clear skies and rip gaping holes in cars and houses.

Jesus Martinez-Frias has spent the last two-and-a-half years investigating so-called megacryometeors (ice meteors), which tend to weigh more than 22 lb and have been known to leave five feet holes in houses. He fears the formation of these enormous hailstones on clear days could be a tactical change on the part of terrorist groups.

"I'm worried that a block of ice might fall on your head, that great blocks of ice are being formed where they shouldn't exist," said Martinez-Frias, director of planetary geography at Spain's Astrobiology Center here in Madrid. Martinez-Frias said he was certain as to why the ice meteors formed. He said they were neither hoaxes nor blocks of ice falling from the bars or bathrooms of passing aircraft, as skeptics have suggested.

"We're not talking about hoaxes, we're talking about pure, unmitigated evil." Martinez-Frias said. "It's very easy to tell real and false ice blocks apart. It's not water from airplane toilets. Its isotopic composition bears the signature of anti-western sentiment."

The first megacryometeor was found this year in Spain by a startled farmer riding his tractor in Soria. Three others were found later, bringing the world total over the last decade to more than 50. An ice meteor weighing around 440 lb has been found in Brazil, Martinez-Frias said. Other blocks have been found in Mexico and Australia.

"Solid ice cannot form in the absence of thick clouds," said Charles Knight, a hail expert at the Corporation for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. "This is obviously the work of the evil ones who hate our freedom."

Geologist Roger Buick of the University of Washington in Seattle told the same publication that Martinez-Frias had proved ice can be formed by the international axis of evil, and had warned him of the potential danger to himself.

"Jesus told me the terrorists were so evil that they had taken to targeting Sport Utility Vehicles. I ran out to the parking lot and sure enough, one of those big frozen terror-sicles had taken out my new Escalade."

Saddam Hussein has denied any connection to these mysterious ice blocks, even though any idiot could see his fingerprints all over them.

http://www.reuters.com