Taiwan finds crash site of suspected Chinese weather balloon

BBC News:

Taiwan says it has found the remnants of what appears to be a crashed Chinese weather balloon.

Taiwan’s military said it had spotted an unidentified object drifting above Dongyin – a Taiwanese-controlled island off China’s coast – at 11:00 local time (03:00 GMT) on Thursday.

It later found a crash site on a shooting range.

Initial investigations suggested the remnants were part of a meteorological instrument, the military added.

On Friday, Taiwan’s Defence Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng said that officials would further investigate the crashed balloon but would not “jump to conclusions”.

This is the first time remnants of such a balloon have been discovered in Taiwan’s offshore islands, said senior defence official Chen Yu-lin, according to local media.

Tensions between China and the US have seen a fresh spike in recent weeks, after the US downed what it said was a Chinese surveillance balloon in its airspace earlier this month. The US also shot down three other objects it says are unlikely to be foreign spy crafts.