The US air force has shot a “high-altitude object” out of the sky over Alaska amid soaring tension over a suspected Chinese spy balloon downed at the weekend.
President Joe Biden ordered the unidentified to be shot down as it “posed a reasonable threat to the safety of civilian flight”, White House spokesman John Kirby said.
“I can confirm that the Department of Defense was tracking a high-altitude object over Alaska airspace in the last 24 hours,” he told a press briefing this evening.
“The object was flying at an altitude of 40,000 feet and posed a reasonable threat to the safety of civilian flight.
“Out of an abundance of caution and at the recommendation of the Pentagon, President Biden ordered the military to take down the object and they did.
“It came inside our territorial waters. Those waters right now are frozen. But inside territorial airspace and over territorial waters.
“Fighter aircraft assigned to US Northern Command took down the object within the last hour.”
