This Monday, November 25, around 4:30 a.m. Paris time, a DHL cargo plane crashed near the airport of the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, in a residential area.
A moment before the shock, “the latest data from Flightradar indicates that the plane was flying at 277 km/h and at an altitude of 198 meters”, noted LRT, Lithuanian public media. According to the videos that were able to be viewed by the information site 15min.lt, we can see that “The plane caught fire after crashing to the ground, barely two kilometers from the landing strip.”
As it lost altitude, the plane's wing hit a house, causing no civilian casualties. One crew member of Spanish origin died, the other three (another Spaniard, a German and a Lithuanian) were hospitalized.
“The reasons for this crash are mysterious”, noted 15 min.lt in the title of his main article on the accident. “At the moment, we have no information on suspicious elements. These were ordinary goods such as we carry every day,” assures Ausra Rutkauskiene, DHL representative in Lithuania, quoted by the economic daily Business Knowledge. She also adds that the flight crew were “reliable and usual”, that he “these were people used to flying”.
Other worrying events
Nevertheless, Darius Jauniskis, the director of security services, emphasized LRT what, “even if the Vilnius air disaster cannot be linked to any event” especially, “we must not reject the terrorist hypothesis”.
In July, packages from Lithuania caught fire in a DHL warehouse in Leipzig. At the start of the month, The Wall Street Journal had indicated that Russia was behind these acts of sabotage.
As recalled Business Knowledge, other worrying events have taken place in the region in recent weeks. “Last week, two communications cables were damaged in the Baltic Sea,” notes the daily, specifying that this act is considered an act of sabotage by the German Minister of Defense. Two Spanish citizens were also arrested on suspicion of trying to set fire to a radio and television equipment company in northern Lithuania.
