There are so far no signs of conscious involvement in the crash of a DHL freight plane near the Lithuanian capital airport. Lithuanian Defense Minister Laurynas Kasčiūnas told journalists that there is so far no evidence that it was sabotage or a terrorist attack.
The Spanish company Swiftair’s plane took off from Leipzig shortly after 3 a.m. to bring packages for DHL to Vilnius. He crashed around 4:30 a.m. A Spanish citizen was killed, a police representative told the Lithuanian news agency Elta this morning. The remaining occupants of the plane – a German, another Spaniard and a Lithuanian – were injured.
The head of the Lithuanian emergency service, Renatas Požėla, said that the cargo plane crashed a few kilometers from the airport and then slid several hundred meters. In doing so, he corrected previous information that the plane had crashed directly into a residential building. There is conflicting information circulating about how far away the crash was from the home.
According to Požėla, a house in Vilnius’ Liepkalnis district was hit by the aircraft debris and caught fire. According to the emergency services, the emergency services were informed at 5:31 a.m. and the fire was under control about two hours later. All twelve residents were brought to safety.
The causes are still unclear. The crew had to initiate an emergency landing about a kilometer from the airport, DHL said. The crash was then “most likely due to a technical error or human error,” said Lithuanian police chief Arūnas Paulauskas at a press conference this morning. According to Lithuania’s national crisis period, there is currently no evidence of a previous explosion.
Security authorities in several countries are investigating
When asked in the morning, Police Chief Paulauskas said that a terrorist attack could not be ruled out. This needs to be investigated. According to national media, the head of the Lithuanian intelligence service, Darius Jauniškis, cannot yet confidently rule out terrorism. But it was “too early to connect the incident to anything,” he said. We are working with foreign partners on the investigation. According to Lithuania’s Defense Minister, the investigation will take “about a week.”
The German security authorities are “in contact with all parties involved at home and abroad in order to clarify the matter as quickly as possible,” security circles said this morning. DHL also launched its own investigation. So far, there is no evidence that any of the packages on board the plane were suspicious, the company says. Aircraft manufacturer Boeing said it was collecting information and was available to provide support.
Some time ago there were warnings about sabotage on cargo planes
For some time now, German security authorities have been warning 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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