Our newsletter hits “the Big Three-Oh” this week with big news from the Middle East and South America.
ISRAELI MAN SHANGHAIED INTO SPACE
Monday evening, September 16, 1996, Uri Sakhov, 62, of Nazareth left his apartment house to mail a letter at the local post office. Suddenly, he heard a whizzing sound and felt hands grabbing his hair and shoulders. Instantly he was pulled into what he described as “an egg-shaped UFO.”
Soon Uri found himself in “a crystal chamber” surrounded by small aliens. He described the occupants as “50 to 100 centimeters ( 2 to 3 feet) tall” with “heads like light bulbs and skinny limbs” who “made unintelligible noises.” Leading the smaller occupants was a green-colored alien in flowing robes, “nearly as tall as me,” also very slender, with a narrow vertical head-shaped “like a zucchini” with eyes located on either side of the head.
One of the small aliens stepped up to Uri and sprayed him in the face with “a yellowish powder.” The aliens then began a series of medical tests, which Uri described as “horrible…they didn’t treat me well at all.”
Midway through the tests, Uri blacked out. When he came to, he “found himself lying flat on his back in the middle of a soccer stadium half a kilometer (500 yards) from his home.” Feeling dizzy and sick, he went home and called the police. He also noticed that he still had the yellow powder on his face.
At the hospital, doctors removed the yellow powder and sent it to a nearby lab for analysis. The lab discovered that the powder was “about 60 percent aluminum” and was “different from any soil found in the area.” The lab’s marketing manager, Michael Kobi, later told the Israeli daily newspaper Ma’ariv that the samples had been sent to NASA in the United States.
(Uri Sakhov’s story appeared in Ma’ariv this week as part of an overall UFO story with the headline “The Great Invasion.” Since his abduction, Uri has been on Israeli radio and TV talk shows. Many thanks to Mideast UFO correspondent Dr. Leon Liebrecht, who saw the broadcast and provided additional details.)
HOVERING UFO CAUSES TRAFFIC JAM IN TEL AVIV
At 2 a.m. on Tuesday, September 17, 1996, traffic on High Road in the Ramat Aviv section of Tel Aviv, Israel came to a sudden stop as motorists abandoned their cars to watch a hovering UFO. Tel Aviv police received dozens of calls about a “light-emitting UFO” doing aerial loops over the northern end of the city. According to the daily newspaper Ma’ariv, police spokesman Gadi Doron said officers reported seeing “a strange light in the night sky,” along with hundreds of motorists at the scene.
As the onlookers watched, a soldier of the Border Police offered to shoot at the object. Other members of the crowd disagreed vehemently. One woman said, “What are you trying to do? Start an interstellar war?”
About an hour before dawn, the UFO stopped “doing tricks” and headed east, parallel to the Avenue Shaul Hamelech. Enthusiastic motorists attempted to follow in their cars. Then the UFO reversed direction, flew back to Ramat Aviv, and gradually disappeared.
In their story, the newspaper Ma’ariv listed 16 recent UFO incidents in Israel.
UFOs APPEAR OVER THE CAPITAL OF JORDAN
Four days prior to the Israeli flap, on Thursday, September 12, 1996, multiple UFOs were seen over Amman, the capital city of Jordan, the Arab kingdom on Israel’s eastern border. The sightings were reported in the Arabic newspaper Al Dustour on September 18 and reprinted in the English-language daily, the Jordan Times, on September 19.
According to Al Dustour, “Strange but seemingly real objects with glowing lights of different colors moved in the skies of Amman Thursday and were seen by a number of citizens.”
One of them was Marwan Muasher, Jordan’s Minister of Information, who was quoted as saying, “On my way home from dinner, I saw such strange objects Thursday night I could not believe what I had seen or find any explanation for the phenomenon.”
UFOs, Muasher added, “were reported at various places in the city at various times, but our (Royal Jordanian Air Force) equipment cannot monitor such a phenomenon.”
The UFOs were last seen at Abu Alanda, a desert outpost north of Amman just before midnight.
WHITE DISCS SIGHTED IN THE NETHERLANDS
On Sunday, September 8, 1996, at 12:30 a.m., “a bright white luminated disc” was seen at Nieuwe Niedorp in the Netherlands. A woman on her way to Schipol International Airport near Amsterdam spotted the UFO and alerted the police.
From 1 a.m. to 1:30 a.m., a “Vliegende schotel” (Dutch for “flying saucer”) was seen hovering over Breezand. Witnesses saw “a swift, left-turning disc hovering above Dorpstraat crossing. It then flew toward Alkmaar.”
Earlier Sunday evening, an outbound ship crossing (Lake) Ijsselmeer sighted “a flying disc” heading east.
White disc reports were also given to police in the towns of Bergen-aan-Zee and Almere Suiten. (Email Interview)
SPHERICAL UFO FLIES OVER SOUTHERN BRAZIL
On Wednesday, September 18, at 6:20 a.m., a metallic spherical UFO flew over Santa Maria, a city in Brazil’s most southerly state of Rio Grande do Sul. Santa Maria is 327 kilometers (204 miles) from Porto Alegre, the state capital.
According to Brasilia’s daily newspaper, Correio Brasiliense, for September 20, 1996, “Something strange is cruising in the skies of Santa Maria…The UFO consisted of a metallic spherical part on one end and a bright light on the tail. Slowly it crossed the sky without a sound.”
The UFO hovered above a four-story apartment building on the Rua Visconde de Pelotas in the center of town. First to spot it was Victor Mostajo, age 2, who was playing on the balcony of the family’s top-floor apartment. Victor immediately ran inside to fetch his father, Hernan Mostajo, a local ufologist and a member of the Associao Brasileira de Pesquisas Ufologicas (Brazilian Association of Ufological Research) of Rio Grade do Sul.
Seeing the UFO, Hernan grabbed his videocam, aimed it at the hovering object and shot five minutes of footage. Selected frames from the tape are now being digitized and will be put on the Internet.
At 6:30 a.m., the UFO zipped away in the direction of Sao Vicente do Sul.
(Editor’s Note: Brazil’s current UFO flap is still going strong. Readers wanting to get in touch with Hernan Mostajo can reach him by writing to the Associao Brasileira de Pesquisas Ufologicas (ABPU), Rua das Andrades 1675, Santa Maria, RS Brasil.)
UFO STALKS ECUADORIAN AIR, NAVAL BASES
Ecuador joins the lineup of South American countries being visited by UFOs this year. According to the Fall 1996 issue of Samizdat magazine, a UFO hovered over the naval base and air academy at Salinas, on Ecuador’s Pacific coast during June.
Salinas is located on La Puntilla, a narrow strip of land separating the Bahia (Bay) de Santa Elena and the Golfo (gulf) de Guayaquil. The base is 150 kilometers (90 miles) west of Ecuador’s principal port city of Guayaquil.
According to Ecuadorian ufologist Jaime Rodriguez, “the artifact (UFO) remained suspended some 300 meters (990 feet) above the base and was seen by approximately 30 officers, many of whom took still photographs of it.”
Seeing the UFO, base commander Lt. Col. Jorge Cabezas Quiroz alerted Ecuador’s air defense center at Taura, near Guayaquil. The Taura radar failed to register the UFO, as did the main Fuerzas Aereas Ecuatoriana (Ecuadorian Air Force) defense center at Marshal Sucre International Airport near Quito.
After two hours of remaining motionless over Salinas, the UFO started across the bay toward La Libertad and then vanished into the sky. (Thanks to Scott Corrales of Samizdat for this story.)
GROUPS SAY GIANT SAUCER SHOT DOWN IN ARGENTINA
For months rumors have circulated about a recent saucer crash in northwestern Argentina. Now two groups have come forward with information about the incident.
According to Guillermo Aldunati of Operation Right to Know, a gigantic saucer appeared over the town of Metan on August 17 or 18, 1995. The object was described as a metallic gray disk approximately 200 meters (660 feet) in diameter. Aldunati reported, “Many onlookers saw the UFO maneuvering, and it was apparently struck by air-to-air missiles, launched by an unknown aircraft that shot at it and knocked it out of the sky.”
Reeling under the missile explosions, the saucer banked sharply to the left and plummeted in a corkscrew fashion. It slammed into a hill north of town called El Crestone or Cerro del Crestone. A private plane attempted to fly over the crash site but was reportedly forced away by “electromagnetic disturbances.”
Metan is located in Argentina’s Salta province, a region of red-rock canyons and vineyards. Metan is on Ruta (Route) 9, approximately 100 kilometers (60 miles) south of Salta and 150 kilometers (90 miles) north of San Miguel de Tucuman. The town is just south of the Rio Juramento.
Armed helicopters with the blue-and-white roundel of Argentina arrived over the crash site. The choppers reportedly fired machinegun bursts at “huaceros” (graverobbers) said to be stripping dead occupants of their clothing and metallic insignia.
According to the Fundacion Argentina de Ovnilogia (Argentine Ufology Foundation), an armored convoy reached Metan from Tucuman, and the Argentine Army sealed off the town for several days. FAO described the aircraft that shot down the saucer as “a dark triangular object.”
Northbound traffic on Ruta 9 was reportedly halted at Yatasto, south of Metan. Soldiers told truckers and motorists that the road was either washed out or blocked by landslides.
At Yatasto, an Indian family selling hot food in the plaza approached some parked Army trucks, hoping to make a sale. An angry sergeant chased them away, but not before the Indians had a look in the back of the rear truck. They claim to have seen “dozens” of nylon body bags stacked inside.
This appears to support Aldunati’s claim that “the unfortunate coverup began immediately afterward…the corpses of the strange creatures resembling the Grays, but taller. The craft was saucer-shaped, more than 200 meters in diameter and some reports speak of 200 casualties. It is said that the corpses were taken to Mendoza and later to the USA.”
Another FAO report claimed that some of the occupants’ bodies were sent to Victoria, in Entre Rios province.
(Editor’s Comment: There may be some truth to these reports. On July 31, 1995, three weeks before the alleged crash at Metan, an Aerolineas Argentinas jetliner, piloted by Capt. Jorge Polanco and Cmdr. Juan Domingo Gaitan, encountered a UFO over the Argentine ski resort city of Bariloche in the Andes. UFO ROUNDUP will have more on the Metan incident as information becomes available.)
NEW UFO WEBSITE
Let’s all welcome UFOZONE to the Net. This site, operated by Luis Pacheco, is located in Buenos Aires, Argentina. You can email them at this address…ufozone@geocities.com. Or visit their Website at http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/3823/
Remember, if you have a UFO to report, email us. UFO ROUNDUP has a strict policy of protecting the confidentiality of eyewitnesses.
That’s it for now. Next week, if we don’t get swamped by more ongoing flaps, we’ll have an update on crop circles. Till then, have a great week…and best wishes from “the paper that goes home…UFO ROUNDUP.”