Aircraft crashes into Beijing’s tallest skyscraper, triggering evacuations

An aircraft crashed into Beijing’s tallest skyscraper on Friday afternoon, triggering emergency evacuations.

The China Zun skyscraper is one of the top 10 tallest buildings in the world, measuring 528m (1,732ft).

Dramatic footage circulating on social media showed debris falling from the 109-story tower, as well as a tail section of the plane and a broken window of a taxicab on the ground. 

Photographs show two smashed windows in the side of the building, which is located in the capital’s busy central business district, Chaoyang.

People were seen evacuating from the skyscraper as fire engines, dozens of police cars and an ambulance arrived at the scene.

The building, also known as the Citic Tower, is the headquarters of Citic Group, one of China’s biggest state-owned financial conglomerates.

The number of casualties remains unclear.

Images showing the aircraft’s registration code seemed to point to a domestically manufactured light sport plane, a Sunward SA 60L Aurora, owned by a local general aviation business.

Unverified flight data from Flightradar24 appeared to show a severely deviated flight path for the aircraft.

Police prevented some people from taking pictures and asked others to delete those they had taken while ushering people away from the building.

There was no immediate official comment and Beijing’s municipal government did not immediately respond to a faxed request for comment from Reuters outside of business hours.

A courier said he had rushed over to Citic Tower around 6pm local time (10am GMT) from a nearby location after hearing a loud crash as an aircraft about the size of a car hit the building.

‘It was so loud – louder than fireworks,’ he said.

He added he had shot a video of the aircraft sticking out of the building, but later deleted it because he was scared of getting caught by police.

Another courier whom Reuters spoke to said he had come to the scene after seeing unverified social media images showing wreckage of a small aircraft on a road next to the building.

Social media posts of the building on Friday were quickly removed from Chinese social media. 

A search of the building’s name on the Xiaohongshu app returned only posts dated Thursday.

A police officer told Reuters journalists to depart from the scene. Asked why they had to leave, the police officer said: ‘We all know why!’

Beijing maintains some of the world’s strictest controls over its airspace and restrictions are particularly tight around the capital’s urban area, where drones and private light aircraft are banned from flying without special authorisation.

The Central Business District is located just a few kilometres from Zhongnanhai, the Communist Party’s leadership headquarters. 

Airspace restrictions and limits on the construction of towers in the vicinity are intended in part to protect the security of the compound.

This is a breaking news story. More to follow