Article Posted on : - Jul 09, 2010

BEIJING (PTI): An Unidentified Flying Object (UFO), which disrupted air traffic in a Chinese city has a “military connection”, a Chinese official has said.

The authorities have learnt what the UFO was after investigations, but it was not “proper time to publicly disclose” the information because there was a “military connection” to it, state run China Daily quoted an official as saying.

The UFO disrupted air traffic over Hangzhou, capital of China's Zhejiang's Province on Wednesday.

The Xiaoshan Airport was closed after the UFO was detected at around 9 pm, and some flights were re-routed to airports in the cities of Ningbo and Wuxi, said a spokesman of the airport.

The airport had resumed operations, and more details will be released after an investigation, he said.

Inbound flights were diverted to the nearby airports in Zhejiang province’s Ningbo and Jiangsu province’s Wuxi. Outbound flights were delayed for three to four hours.

A staff member at the airport’s information desk said the airport had “no idea” how many flights were affected by the closure.

Another official daily, Global Times reported that “an UFO trailed by a fan-shaped white light appeared last Wednesday in Urumqi, Northwest China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.”

It was later identified as debris from an intercontinental missile launched by the US, Song Huagang, secretary general of the Xinjiang Astronomy Society said.