Defense officials told US media that debris fell near Myrtle Beach in South Carolina.

Washington:

Politics has started in America on Chinese balloons.

Republican US lawmakers on Sunday criticized President Joe Biden for waiting to shoot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon.

This balloon was seen flying in the United States.

US lawmakers accused China of showing weakness and initially trying to keep the violation of US airspace a secret.

Let us tell you that a fighter jet of the US Air Force dropped the balloon on the coast of South Carolina on Saturday, a week after entering the US airspace near Alaska.

This spy balloon made US-China relations more tense.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Saturday that the US military was able to gather "valuable" intelligence by studying the balloon, and that three other Chinese surveillance balloons had entered the United States during Donald Trump's administration.

However, the former president has denied. 

The US military launched a campaign to recover all equipment from the wreckage of a suspected Chinese spy balloon that was shot down in the Atlantic Ocean on Saturday.

At the same time, reacting strongly to this action on Sunday, China threatened America of dire consequences for using force against its civilian unmanned aircraft.

A senior US defense official told reporters in Washington that on the instructions of President Joe Biden, the US military shot down a Chinese surveillance balloon in the Atlantic Ocean, about 9.65 kilometers off the US coast in South Carolina, at 2.39 pm local time.

During this, there was no loss of life or property to American citizens.

According to a defense official, a fighter jet taking off from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia fired a missile that caused the balloon to crash into the ocean within US airspace.

Biden told reporters in Maryland, "I instructed them to drop the balloon."

He said, "When I was informed about the balloon on Wednesday, I ordered the Pentagon to bring it down as soon as possible. They (Pentagon) decided to do this without harming anyone on the ground and the most appropriate The time was found when the balloon was above the sea."

Citing a statement by China's Foreign Ministry on Sunday, China's state-run Xinhua news agency said Beijing strongly protested the US use of force to attack China's civilian unmanned aerial vehicle.



(This news has not been edited by NDTV team. It is published directly from syndicate feed.)

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