First modification:
The US military has shot down a new “object” flying over Lake Huron, near the US-Canada border, two elected officials have stated. This Sunday is the latest in a series of mysterious flying objects that have alerted authorities in the United States and Canada.
A new “object” hovering over Lake Huron near the Canadian border has been shot down by the US military, two elected officials announced on Sunday.
The object, the fourth in just over a week, “was shot down by United States Air Force and National Guard pilots,” Michigan Democrat Elissa Slotkin tweeted, while her colleague Jack Bergman spoke of an “object ( …) disabled over Lake Huron”.
Earlier, the United States had decided to briefly close the airspace over Lake Michigan for “national defense” reasons, the US civil aviation regulator (FAA) had announced.
This news comes at a time when three flying objects have been shot down in one week over the United States and Canada.
On Saturday, February 11, an unidentified object flying over Canada was shot down by a US aircraft in a joint operation between Washington and Ottawa, marking a new incident since the destruction of a suspected Chinese ‘spy balloon’ last week.
Radar anomaly and ‘spy balloon’
Also late Saturday, a fighter jet was sent to investigate a “radar anomaly” over the US state of Montana, the US military said.
“The aircraft did not identify any objects that could be correlated with the radar returns,” NORAD and US Northern Command stated, adding that they “continued to monitor the situation.”
Northwestern US Territory airspace had been temporarily closed “to support Department of Defense operations.” The airspace has been reopened,” the US civil aviation regulator (FAA) declared on Saturday night.
On February 4, images captured by US military aircraft show that the Chinese balloon that flew over the United States was indeed equipped with espionage tools and was not intended for meteorology.
The diplomatic clash led the head of US diplomacy, Antony Blinken, to postpone a rare visit to China.
US authorities continue to collect remains of the balloon in the Atlantic, near the coast of South Carolina.
*AFP; adapted from its original in French
