A photo taken by a resident in
Hangzhou shows an unidentified flying object hovering over Hangzhou,
capital of East China's Zhejiang province, late Wednesday, July 7, 2010.
[Photo/Metro Express]
An unidentified flying object (UFO)
disrupted air traffic over Zhejiang's provincial capital Hangzhou late
on Wednesday, the municipal government said on Thursday.
Xiaoshan
Airport was closed after the UFO was detected at around 9 pm, and some
flights were rerouted to airports in the cities of Ningbo and Wuxi ,
said an airport spokesman, who declined to be named.
The airport
had resumed operations, and more details will be released after an
investigation, he said.
A source with knowledge of the matter,
however, told China Daily on Thursday that authorities had learned what
the UFO was after an investigation.
But it was not the proper
time to publicly disclose the information because there was a military
connection, he said, adding that an official explanation is expected to
be given on Friday.
Inbound flights were diverted to the nearby
airports in Zhejiang province's Ningbo and Jiangsu province's Wuxi.
Outbound flights were delayed for three to four hours.
A staff
member at the airport's information desk said the airport had "no idea"
how many flights were affected by the closure.
At around 11 pm on
Wednesday, a netizen wrote three entries announcing the airport's
closure in
his microblog at Sina.com, but they were all soon
deleted.
He posted an apology at midnight, saying the news had
not been confirmed and asking those who had republished his earlier
entries to delete them.
Source: China Daily(By Yang Yijun)