The Pentagon shot down an unidentified object over Alaska on Friday on the orders of US President Joe Biden. This comes less than a week after a US fighter jet shot down a Chinese spy balloon flying over US soil, The New York Times reported, citing US officials..

John Kirby, White House press secretary, confirmed the downing at a press conference on Friday.. It has not yet been confirmed if the object was a balloon, he said, but it was moving at an altitude that made it a potential threat to civilian aircraft.. Biden ordered the downing of an unidentified object for security reasons, Kirby said.

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A US official said " Officials said they could not confirm if any surveillance equipment was on the downed site.. It is not clear if this was an object from another state or a commercial/research operation that went astray.

On February 4, the US shot down a Chinese balloon off the coast of South Carolina, which flew from the Aleutian Islands in the Pacific Ocean to the US Atlantic coast in a week.. China said it was a weather balloon. The Pentagon claims it was the fifth Chinese balloon seen over the US in the past few years..