A small plane crashed this Friday in Beijing against the China Zun, the tallest building in the Chinese capital, witnesses confirmed to EFEwithout for the moment the causes of the event are known.
The impact occurred in the Guomao area, the main financial center of Beijing, in the Chaoyang district and next to other emblematic buildings in the Chinese capital, including the headquarters of state television. CCTV.
Images taken at the scene and circulating on international social networks show a hole in the glass facade of the skyscraper, located at a considerable height, and fragments of an aircraft fallen on a nearby road.
Videos are also circulating in which pieces are seen falling from a great height next to the tower, as well as damage to vehicles in the area. Marcos Sabio, a young Spaniard living in Beijing, was a close witness to the event, as he told EFE He works on the next block.
“Around six in the afternoon I went to the gym, which is on the fifth floor of the building, and there I heard a noise, saw a little smoke and immediately received a message from the company notifying the workers that a plane had crashed into the building opposite,” he explained. Once on the street, Sabio saw a large police deployment, traffic blocks and officers “asking people not to look,” he added.
Another Spaniard living in Beijing who preferred not to be identified explained to EFE who encountered the operation: “Dozens of police cars. Many ambulances and both directions of the street blocked,” he said.
Photograph provided that shows a fragment of an aircraft on a road near the China Zun building this Friday,
Official silence
At the moment, Chinese authorities have not reported any victims or offered an official version of the circumstances of the incident, which occurred in one of the busiest business areas in Beijing.
It is also not known whether the aircraft was carrying out a private, commercial or other type of flight, nor if the impact was the result of a breakdown, loss of control or other causes.
This Friday, the Aviation Safety Network database included an entry about the event in which it identifies the device as a Sunward SA 60L Aurora with registration B-12PP and registers the incident as an accident, although it warns that the information for now comes from unofficial sources.
According to that file, the plane’s departure and destination airport was Beijing Shifosi Airport, in the northeast of the municipal area of Beijing.
Images of the event were circulating this Friday on the social network
The China Zun, also known as CITIC Tower, dominates the skyline of Beijing’s financial district and is one of the most recognizable buildings in the capital. The tower, 528 meters high, was inaugurated in 2018 and then became the tallest skyscraper in the city.
Its construction was embroiled in controversy after the Hong Kong newspaper Ming Pao reported that its upper floors allowed one to observe, in good visibility conditions, sensitive areas of the Zhongnanhai complex, where the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) reside, an extreme that the authorities did not publicly confirm.
According to this medium, the supposed visibility towards Zhongnanhai would have motivated changes to the upper floors before their entry into service, although officially these modifications were linked to fire safety issues in high-rise buildings.
Three years after its inauguration, in 2021, China vetoed the construction of new skyscrapers over 500 meters high and “strictly” limited those over 250 meters, amid concerns about the structural safety of these blocks and the difficulties of some developers in attracting tenants.
