Small aircraft crashes into Beijing’s tallest skyscraper, videos show

Police sealed off roads around Beijing’s tallest skyscraper after a small aircraft, about the size of a car, crashed into CITIC Tower on Friday, June 26, sending debris from the upper floors and drawing a heavy emergency response to the city’s central business district.

The building, also known as China Zun, is the 528-meter headquarters of CITIC Group and is widely described as either 108 or 109 stories. Videos and images showed damage near the top of the tower, debris falling from the structure and a tail section of the aircraft on the ground, raising immediate questions about how the aircraft reached the core of tightly controlled airspace over central Beijing.

Witnesses told Reuters the aircraft struck the tower before police blocked nearby roads and stopped passersby from filming the scene. The Associated Press said the crash triggered evacuations and brought a large police and ambulance presence into the business district, where workers and pedestrians were cleared from the area around the tower.

Flightradar24 confirmed the crash after witness accounts, giving the incident an added layer of verification even as Chinese authorities had offered no information about what happened at the time. UPI said China had not publicly mentioned the crash. The silence left open basic questions about the aircraft’s origin, flight path and purpose.

CITIC Tower sits in Beijing’s central business district, an area that includes some of the capital’s most sensitive and closely monitored airspace. The building’s prominence, as the tallest in Beijing and the home of one of China’s major state-owned conglomerates, made the strike especially striking and intensified scrutiny of the city’s air defenses and public safety procedures.