Colombia and Costa Rica report the presence of a balloon of unknown origin

Colombia and Costa Rica reported that a balloon had passed through their airspace.after the US announced that a “Chinese surveillance balloon” had been sighted flying over Latin America.

The general director of the Costa Rican Civil Aviation, Fernando Naranjo Elizondo, said on Saturday in an interview with CRHoy.com that At the moment it is impossible to determine the origin of said flying object.

“We don’t know if the balloon continued to fly at the height it had, it was a balloon that maintained a slightly variable height, but we don’t know if the balloon fell at night, if it continued to rise or what trajectory it followed, We did not have any reports of aircraft or people”, he explained.

For its part, the Colombian Air Force said that the device had been identified on Friday morning and monitored. until it left the national airspaceand assured that it had never posed a “threat” to the security and defense of the country, as well as to aviation.

On February 3, “the National Air Defense System detected an object above 55,000 feet, that entered Colombian airspace in the northern sector of the country, moving at an average speed of 25 knotsidentifying characteristics similar to those of a balloon,” he said in a statement on Saturday.

The Colombian Air Force added that it is carrying out “the pertinent investigations and coordination with different countries and institutions to establish the origin of the object”.

A US Defense Department spokesman said on Friday that a second Chinese “surveillance” balloon had been seen flying over Latin America, a day after another similar craft was detected in US airspace.

He did not provide details on the location of the identified artifact over Latin America, nor where was he goingindicated the agency afp.

On Saturday, the Pentagon reported that a US warplane had shot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon off the US Atlantic coast, at which China expressed “strong discontent” and said it could spark “necessary responses”. (YO)