Storming of Area 51 to ‘see aliens’ fails to materialise

Washington, Sep 21 (IANS) Fears that thousands of people could storm Area 51 "to see aliens" were unfounded, with just several dozen arriving at the secretive US military base in the state of Nevada, a media report said on Saturday.

Millions had responded to a Facebook post in June calling for people to raid the facility September 20, the BBC reported.

But nobody attempted to enter the site on Friday and only one person was arrested - for urinating near the gate.

Area 51 has long been rumoured to house secrets about extraterrestrial life.

Within days of its launch, the Facebook event posted by California student Matty Roberts became a viral sensation, making headlines across the world. More than three million people expressed interest in taking part.

However, the US Air Force warned that Area 51 was "an open training range for the US Air Force, and we would discourage anyone from trying to come into the area where we train American armed forces".

Area 51 was created during the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union as a testing and development facility for aircraft, the BBC said.

But the secrecy surrounding the site has helped fuel many conspiracy theories.

Most famous is the claim that the site hosts an alien spacecraft and the bodies of its pilots after they crashed at Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947. The US government has said that there were no aliens and the crashed craft was a weather balloon.