A pilot of Spanish nationality has died when a cargo plane crashed in a residential area in the capital of LithuaniaVilnius, as reported by local authorities, who have also confirmed that two other injured people have been evacuated to a hospital.
The accident took place around 5:30 a.m. (local time), when the plane, a Boeing 737 operated by the Spanish airline Swift Air for DHLwas trying to make an emergency landing, as the German firm has explained. He was flying from the German city of Leipzig.
There were four crew members on board, including the deceased pilot who was located “without any sign of life”, as explained by the head of the Lithuanian National Center for Crisis Management, Vilmantas Vitkauskas. The other three crew members have Spanish, German and Lithuanian nationality.reports the Elta agency.
The mayor of Vilnius, Valdas Benkunskas, has stressed that The aircraft almost hits a residential buildingin whose surroundings it ended up crashing. The property, however, suffered a fire due to the impact of the wreckage of the plane, but the 13 residents who were inside “are safe and have been evacuated.”
Vitkauskas has cited as the initial hypothesis of the incident that it was due to “a technical problem”despite the fact that “in the current geopolitical context, each incident is analyzed in a different way,” reports the LRT network. The Chief of Police, Arunas Paulauskas, has also alluded to “a technical failure or human error” as the main line of investigation, although in his case he has alluded that “terrorism cannot be ruled out.”
Germany had issued a warning to logistics companies at the end of August, German security authorities began to warn about “unconventional incendiary devices” sent by unknown persons through parcel service providers. At that time, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) and the Federal Criminal Investigation Office (BKA) issued a corresponding alert to companies in the aviation and logistics sector.
The warning was apparently related to a incident at DHL logistics center in Leipzig, which serves as the company’s global center. In July, a package sent from the Baltic countries, allegedly containing an incendiary device, caught fire there.
“Hybrid incident”
The Prime Minister, Ingrida Simonyte, expressed herself in the same sense and urged the population in a message published on social networks to “refrain from drawing hasty conclusions” while the investigation lasts. But German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock stated that the tragedy can be “an accident or a hybrid incident” linked to external intervention.
“We must seriously ask ourselves if this is an accident or another hybrid incident”he said in statements on the sidelines of a G7 meeting in Italy. The term “hybrid incident” has been used by Western countries since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, to describe attacks that do not use conventional military tactics such as sabotage of infrastructure or launching cyberattacks. The head of Lithuania’s intelligence services, Darius Jauniskis, stated that no accusations can be made yet.
«We are working with our foreign partners to obtain all the information we can. We cannot rule out the possibility of a terrorist act», Jauniskis told the press. “We warned that such things were possible, we see an increasingly aggressive Russia (…) but we still cannot make attributions or point the finger at anyone,” he added.
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