A small aircraft flew into the tallest building in Beijing on Friday, sending huge hunks of debris and plane parts plummeting onto the streets below and prompting crowds to flee.
Video shared on social media and verified by The New York Times showed debris falling from the skyscraper, as people ran to safety. The footage showed broken windows and debris, including what appeared to be the tail of a small aircraft, falling dozens of stories into the street below.
The building is in the capital’s busy central business district, which was clogged with cars at evening rush hour. It was not immediately clear how many people were injured, if any were. The whereabouts and identity of the pilot were also unknown.
Photos posted to social media from the site showed parts of an aircraft that appeared to be a lightweight model with only a few seats, registered to the airline Shuangyue General Aviation, a regional flight training provider. Calls to the company went unanswered.
Data from FlightRadar, a flight tracking website, showed that the plane took off from an airfield in Beijing’s eastern Pinggu district. The plane circled the area before flying west into the city center.
It was unclear if the crash was an accident or intentional. It was also unclear how the pilot was able to fly into the city center apparently unobstructed. Calls to the Civil Aviation Authority of China and a nearby police station in Beijing rang unanswered.
“This aircraft is normally used for pilot training east of Beijing,” said Ian Petchenik, a spokesman for FlightRadar. He said that this flight was “out of character” with those types of flights, adding: “I don’t think we can rule anything out at this point.”
There was significant police presence near the building on Friday night. The police closed at least one major road near the building, setting up a folding metal grille gate, and a police car with flashing lights was parked on the street. High above, bright lights occasionally flashed around a hole in the side of the building as repair work got underway.
The skyscraper is called the Citic Tower and is also known as China Zun. It is the headquarters of Citic Group, one of China’s biggest state-owned financial conglomerates.
An employee of a nearby gym, who identified himself by the surname Zhang, said that he was walking with friends in the area when he saw an aircraft hit the tower around 6 p.m. local time. A woman with a head injury was later taken away in an ambulance, he said. A worker at a nearby restaurant reported hearing a loud noise around the same time.
The accounts of injuries could not be immediately verified. But in a sign of the authorities’ sensitivity about the news, social media posts about the crash and the building itself appeared to be censored online in China.
A resident of the neighborhood who gave his surname, Wang, said that just before 6 p.m., he heard loud noises coming from the street and walked toward the tower, where he saw a hole, which was briefly on fire, in the side of the building. He also said he saw the wreckage of an aircraft, also on fire, at the base of the building. He could not determine whether there were any casualties before the police hurried onlookers away, he said.
An office worker who gave only his first name, Richard, told a Times reporter that he had been in a meeting on a high floor in an office building across from the Citic Tower when he realized something had happened. “I saw some white pieces of paper fluttering through the air,” he said, though he couldn’t see or hear anything else. He said he was surprised when he emerged from his office building later to find a crowd outside.
Later in the evening, about 200 people had gathered across the street from the Citic Tower, taking pictures. The police were waving people away from entering the street on the east side. The avenue past the south side of the building remained open to pedestrians, bicyclists and motor scooters.
The iconic tower was completed in 2018 and can be seen from across the city. It is across the street from another well-known Beijing architectural landmark, the headquarters of China Central Television, where nearly 20 police cars were parked on Friday night.
Ruoxin Zhang contributed research from Beijing, James McManagan contributed reporting from London and James Glanz contributed reporting from New York City.
