Small plane crashes into high-rise building in Beijing - pilot dies, 13 injured

Beijing authorities officially confirmed for the first time late Saturday afternoon local time that a plane had flown into a high-rise building in the Chaoyang district the evening before. The Chaoyang district government said there was only one person on the plane. The pilot died and 13 other people were injured. The name of the high-rise building was not mentioned. Further details were not initially known.

On Friday evening, the crash of a small plane in the CBD caused a stir. It crashed into Beijing's tallest building, the almost 530-meter-high Citic Tower. As footage from various perspectives on Western social media showed, wreckage of the plane flew from the sky. There was a visible hole in the facade of the Citic Tower, also known as China Zun. The tower is located ten minutes' drive south of the Handelsblatt office in Beijing.

How the incident came about remains unclear. There were initially no reports in China's state media, although the main building of the state broadcaster CCTV is in the immediate vicinity of the Citic Tower. Posts about the incident were censored on Chinese social media, but photos and videos spread on X.