The Pentagon detected another Chinese spy balloon and assured that it is flying over Latin America. (Reuters)
The United States authorities have detected a new Chinese spy balloon flying over Latin America, the Pentagon said this Friday, a day after a similar craft entered US airspace.
“We are seeing information from a balloon that is flying over Latin America. We now assess that it is another Chinese surveillance balloon,” Pentagon spokesman Patrick Ryder said in a statement sent to the press, without specifying the exact location of the device.
The Costa Rican newspaper La Nación had just published an article about a white flying object, which looked like a hot air balloon, and which had been sighted over the Central American country.
Consulted by CNN, a senior Pentagon official indicated that the balloon sighted over Latin America does not appear to be heading to the United States.
The Pentagon announced Thursday that it was following the movements of a Chinese “spy balloon” that was flying over the state of Montana (northeast US), where one of the three existing nuclear missile silo fields on US territory is located.
The Pentagon announced Thursday that it was tracking the movements of a Chinese “spy balloon” that was flying over the state of Montana. (AP)
The other two atomic silo fields are located in two states bordering Montana: North Dakota to the east and Wyoming to the south.
As the Pentagon explained this Friday, the balloon has moved in the last few hours in an easterly direction and is now in the center of the country, some 18,288 meters from the surface.
While the first balloon detected this Thursday crosses the North American country, the Pentagon leadership has strongly recommended to the president, Joe Biden, that he take no action against the device for security reasons, since debris could fall on the population.
The presence of the Chinese regime’s spy ship in US airspace has triggered a diplomatic crisis between Washington and Beijing and has led to the suspension of the trip that the Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, had planned to make to the Asian country.
For its part, Beijing admitted this Friday that the balloon belongs to it, although it assured that “it is a civil airship used for research purposes, mainly meteorological.”
(With information from EFE)
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