US shoots down unidentified high-altitude aerial object in Alaska

A United State (US) fighter jet has shot down an object which was the size of a small car, flying at a high altitude over Alaska in the direction of President Joe Biden, the White House said on February 10.

As per press secretary Brigadier General Pat Ryder, the object posed a reasonable threat to civilian air traffic.

''After shooting it down, the object, whose origin is yet to be ascertained, has fallen off the coast of Alaska in frozen water and an effort is being made to collect debris of the same,'' Pat Ryder informed reporters during a press conference.

It is worth mentioning that this was the second incident as last week, the US had shot down a Chinese spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina in the Atlantic Ocean.

It was hovering over continental America for several days after entering the US airspace on January 30 in Montana.

China claimed that the ballon was theirs but denied that it was for surveillance purposes rather than weather monitoring and that it had drifted off course.

Speaking over the incident, National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby said that the Defence Department was tracking it over Alaska airspace in the last 24 hours.

''It was flying at an altitude of 40,000 feet and posed a reasonable threat to the safety of the civilian flight,'' he added.

''President Biden ordered the military to down the object and they did it. It came inside our territorial waters...those waters right now are frozen,'' he said.

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