A cargo plane that took off from Leipzig on behalf of the postal service provider DHL crashed near a residential building near the airport in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius. At least one person was killed early in the morning and at least two others were injured, report the news agencies Bloomberg and Reuters, citing the police. According to initial information, there were a total of four people in the plane, and one pilot also survived.
The Baltic news agency BNS quoted a spokeswoman for the rescue service as saying that numerous emergency services were on duty. Traffic at the scene of the accident is restricted. According to preliminary data from the rescue service, the emergency services were informed at 5:28 a.m. local time that a cargo plane had crashed into a building, writes the BNS agency. It is said to be a two-story residential building that was on fire. According to the German Press Agency (dpa), twelve people were taken out of the house, and all residents are said to have survived.
According to current information, it is not certain whether the house was actually hit or the plane just crashed in the immediate vicinity. Vilnius’ mayor Valdas Benkunskas said, according to dpa, that the plane did not hit the house “by chance” and fell into the yard. Many parts of the plane were thrown around, a Lithuanian radio journalist reported from the scene of the accident. According to him, the area is not densely populated, there are only a few houses. According to Reuters and dpa, the accident site in the Liepkalnis district is almost one and a half kilometers from the airport runway.
The head of DHL’s Lithuanian subsidiary confirmed to Lithuanian Radio that the plane belonged to one of the company’s contractors. It was operated by the airline Swift, said the head of the Lithuanian crisis management center on the radio. The cause of the accident is still unclear. It is being investigated whether the cause of the crash was related to “technical problems,” said the head of the crisis management center. But it is still too early for more details.
Security authorities have been warning about sabotage of cargo planes for a long time
Even if it is not yet known why the plane crashed, the case suggests information from the German security authorities. These have been warning for some time about “unconventional incendiary devices” that are being sent by unknown persons via freight service providers. At the time, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) and the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) sent a corresponding warning to companies in the aviation and logistics sectors.
The warning message was linked in security circles to, among other things, an incident at the DHL Leipzig logistics center, which acts as the company’s global hub. A package sent from the Baltics containing an incendiary device is said to have caught fire in July.
The word “Russia” did not appear in the warning message from BfV and BKA. Nevertheless, in security circles a connection with the increasing cases of Russian sabotage in Germany is not ruled out.
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