About 200 villagers have fallen ill from mysterious gases that spewed from a crater after a meteorite crashed in southeastern Peru, but no radiation has been detected, officials and scientists say.

Scores of residents of the farming village of Carancas began vomiting and complaining of headaches and dizziness after the space object struck the area Saturday, creating an eight metre deep, 20 metre-wide crater.

"We have determined with precision instruments that there is no radiation," engineer Renan Ramirez of the Peruvian Nuclear Energy Institute told AFP.