Aircraft crashes into Beijing's tallest skyscraper, triggering evacuations

By IMOGEN GARFINKEL - SENIOR FOREIGN NEWS REPORTER Published: 14:33, 26 June 2026 | Updated: 14:59, 26 June 2026 An aircraft crashed into Beijing's tallest skyscraper on Friday afternoon, triggering emergency evacuations. The China Zun skyscraper is one of the top 10 tallest buildings in the world, measuring 528 metres. Dramatic footage circulating on social media showed debris falling from the 109-story tower, as well as a tail section of the plane and a broken window of a taxicab on the ground.  Photographs show two smashed windows in the side of the building, which is located in the capital’s busy central business district, Chaoyang District. People were seen evacuating from the skyscraper as fire engines, dozens of police cars and an ambulance arrived at the scene. The building, also known as the Citic Tower, is the headquarters of Citic Group, one of China's biggest state-owned financial conglomerates. The number of casualties remains unclear. Images showing the aircraft's registration code seemed to point to a domestically manufactured light sport plane, a Sunward SA 60L Aurora, owned by a local general aviation business. Unverified flight data from Flightradar24 appeared to show a severely deviated flight path for the aircraft. An aircraft crashed into Beijing's tallest skyscraper on Friday afternoon, triggering emergency evacuations Photographs show two smashed windows in the side of the building, which is located in the capital’s busy central business district, Chaoyang District  Dramatic footage circulating on social media showed debris falling from the 109-story tower, as well as a tail section of the plane and a broken window of a taxicab on the ground Police prevented some people from taking pictures and asked others to delete those they had taken while ushering people away from the building. There was no immediate official comment and Beijing's municipal government did not immediately respond to a faxed request for comment from Reuters outside of business hours. A courier said he had rushed over to CITIC Tower around 6pm local time (1000 GMT) from a nearby location after hearing a loud crash as a aircraft about the size of a car hit the building. 'It was so loud – louder than fireworks,' he said. He added he had shot a video of the aircraft sticking out of the building, but later deleted it because he was scared of getting caught by police. Another courier whom Reuters spoke to said he had come to the scene after seeing unverified social media images showing wreckage of a small aircraft on a road next to the building. Social media posts of the building on Friday were quickly removed from Chinese social media.  A search of the building's name on the Xiaohongshu app returned only posts dated Thursday. A police officer told Reuters journalists to depart from the scene. Asked why they had to leave, the police officer said: 'We all know why!' This is a breaking news story. More to follow  The comments below have not been moderated. The views expressed in the contents above are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline. By posting your comment you agree to our house rules. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual We will automatically post your comment and a link to the news story to your Facebook timeline at the same time it is posted on MailOnline. To do this we will link your MailOnline account with your Facebook account. We’ll ask you to confirm this for your first post to Facebook. You can choose on each post whether you would like it to be posted to Facebook. Your details from Facebook will be used to provide you with tailored content, marketing and ads in line with our Privacy Policy.