The object flew at 40,000 feet and therefore posed a risk to civilian air traffic. He was shot about 27 km from the border with the United States, Anand said on Saturday evening.

The object was observed earlier Saturday at high altitude over Canada. Before he was shot, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had a conversation with US President Joe Biden. The shooting happened over the Yukon region in western Canada.

In a Twitter post Trudeau writes that Canadian and American planes were dispatched, and that an American F-22 plane fired at the object

Montana Closed Airspace

Canada’s defense minister did not speculate on the object’s origin. She doesn’t describe it as a balloon and says it was smaller than the Chinese balloon that was shot down off Southern California last weekend.

On Saturday evening, parts of the airspace over the US state of Montana were also closed for a short time. This was done to support Department of Defense activities, US officials said. Planes were dispatched after an anomaly was detected on radar, but nothing unusual was found in the airspace.

Three objects shot down

The object shot down over Canada is the third known to have violated North American airspace in the past two weeks.

An unidentified car-sized object was shot down over Alaska on Friday, and last weekend what is suspected to be a Chinese spy balloon was shot down after flying over the states -United. According to the Chinese authorities, it was a weather balloon that went astray and the country reacted strongly to the downing of the balloon.

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