Washington - (AFP) - The United States on Monday denied Chinese accusations that it had sent balloons into Chinese airspace more than ten times since January 2022, as it tries to solve the mystery of the three unidentified flying objects it has shot down in recent days.

"That's not true! We don't! That's not true at all!" John Kirby, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said in response to a question from MSNBC.

Earlier, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told reporters on Monday, "It is not strange for the United States to illegally enter the airspace of other countries."

"Since last year alone, American balloons have illegally flown over China more than ten times without any approval from the Chinese authorities," he added.

On the other hand, the White House and the US State Department accused China on Monday of "trying to put an end to the damage" related to its "(special) spy balloon program."

Relations between the United States and China have deteriorated in recent weeks due to Washington's decision in early February to shoot down a Chinese balloon suspected of being espionage, while China stressed that its targets were civilian.

Since then, a number of similar objects have been shot down in the United States and Canada, although Beijing has only acknowledged sending one of them.

Over the weekend, Chinese state media reported that an unidentified flying object had been spotted off the country's east coast, and that the military was preparing to shoot it down.

Beijing Monday declined to comment on this report, and only referred journalists to the Ministry of Defense, which did not respond to AFP's requests for comment.

But it accused the United States of sending more than a dozen balloons into its airspace since January 2022.

When asked about how China would respond to these supposed incursions, Wang said that Beijing had handled these incidents in a "responsible and professional" manner.

"If you want to know more about the American high-altitude blimps illegally entering Chinese airspace, I suggest you ask the American side," he said.

The Americans have been monitoring the airspace continuously since an increasing number of incursions were reported, of which Beijing denied knowledge on Monday.

The Pentagon said Sunday that it does not yet know what the three other objects were, the first of which was dropped on Friday over Alaska, while the second was dropped on Saturday over the Canadian Yukon region, and the third Sunday over Lake Huron on the border with Canada.

But he pointed out that the object that was shot down on Sunday had been tracked for about a day and did not resemble the Chinese airship that Washington said was intended for espionage purposes and was shot down off the coast of the Atlantic Ocean on February 4 after flying over the country.

An American F-22 aircraft shot down the "high-altitude flying object" on the orders of US President Joe Biden "in a precautionary measure," according to a senior US official.

This object, which the official described as having an octagonal structure with wires hanging from it, “was not a military threat to anything on the ground,” according to the official, who explained that it was likely to pose a danger to civil aviation as it flew at an altitude of six thousand meters over Michigan.

For his part, the commander of US forces in North America, General Glenn Vanherk, told reporters that after sending planes to verify what this object was, it was found that there was no indication of any threat, as was the case with previous objects.

He refused to describe the shape and size of the objects, but explained that they were moving very slowly.

Speculation abounded as to what these objects might be in recent days.

"I will let the intelligence and counter-intelligence services figure it out," VanHerk told reporters when asked if these objects could be extraterrestrials or extraterrestrials.
"I haven't ruled anything out at this point," he added.