- A cargo plane that took off from Leipzig on behalf of the postal service provider DHL crashed into the courtyard of a residential building near the airport in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius early this morning.
- At least one person was killed and three others were injured. The residents of the house remained uninjured.
- The cause of the accident is still unclear.
According to preliminary information from the emergency services, the emergency services were informed of the crash at 5:28 a.m. local time. According to initial information, there were four people on the plane. One person was dead and three others were taken to hospital with injuries. It is being investigated whether the cause of the crash was related to “technical problems,” said the head of the National Crisis Management Center on Lithuanian radio. However, it is still too early to say anything more precise. According to him, the cargo plane crashed next to a residential building.
The plane accidentally missed the house and crashed into the yard.
Mayor Valdas Benkunskas said the machine missed the house “by accident” and fell into the yard. After the incident, a fire broke out and twelve residents were evacuated from the house. Many parts of the plane were thrown around, a journalist from Lithuanian Radio reported from the scene of the accident in the Liepkalnis district. According to him, the area is not densely populated – there are only a few houses.
Police Chief: Answers take time
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According to the Lithuanian police chief, the search for the cause of the crash of a cargo plane that took off from Leipzig will take some time.
Inspecting the crime scene, collecting evidence and collecting information and objects could take a whole week. “These answers will not come so quickly,” said Arunas Paulauskas.
The plane tried to land and did not reach the runway, Paulauskas said. The crash was “most likely due to a technical error or human error.” At the same time, when asked whether it could have been a terrorist attack, he said that such a scenario could not be ruled out. «This is one of the versions of the crash that needs to be investigated and verified. There is still a lot of work ahead of us.”
The head of DHL’s Lithuanian subsidiary confirmed to Lithuanian Radio that the plane belonged to one of the company’s contractors. The cause of the accident is currently unclear.
The aircraft involved in the accident was a plane belonging to the postal service provider DHL.
Keystone/JAN WOITAS
German security authorities warned
At the end of August it became known that German security authorities were warning about “unconventional incendiary devices” that were 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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