- A DHL cargo plane crashed into a house near Lithuania’s Vilnius airport.
- The plane was a Boeing 737 aircraft en route from Leipzig, Germany.
- At least one person was killed in the crash, according to reports.
A DHL cargo plane crashed into a house near Lithuania’s Vilnius airport, killing at least one person and injuring three others.
The plane, a Boeing 737 aircraft en route from Germany, crashed outside Vilnius International Airport at around 5:30 a.m. local time, the airport said on Facebook.
“We can confirm that today at around 4:30 am CET an aircraft of Swift Air, a third-party carrier operating under contract for DHL, which was on its way from LEJ Airport (Leipzig, Germany) to VNO Airport (Vilnius, Lithuania), made a forced landing about one kilometer from VNO Airport,” a DHL spokesperson told BI.
The spokesperson added that four people were onboard and that the cause of the incident was not known.
At least one crew death resulted from the crash, the Associated Press and Reuters reported.
According to surveillance video seen by AP, the plane descended normally as it approached the airport, but then exploded in a huge ball of fire out of sight behind a building.
The mayor of Vilnius, Valdas Benkunskas, told Business Insider that as of Monday morning, three crew members were still being treated in a hospital.
All 12 residents of the house that was crashed into are safe and have been evacuated, Reuters reported, citing information from a police press conference.
Benkunskas told BI that the residents, including two children, have been accommodated in a hotel and are “completely safe.”
Benkuskas told BI that the crash narrowly avoided being more deadly.
“Very near that place, we have another block of houses with many people,” he said. “And 300 meters away, we have a logistical center, which is full of employees, so I believe that we could have had much more consequences in that case.”
The mayor said the city is safe, adding that a “good illustration of this is that even after such a tragic event, flights from the airport were only suspended for about an hour.”
Renatas Požėla, the head of Lithuania’s firefighting and emergency services unit, said the plane fell a few kilometers before the airport. “It just skidded for a few hundred meters, its debris somewhat caught a residential house,” he said, per AP.
“Residential infrastructure around the house was on fire, and the house was slightly damaged, but we managed to evacuate people,” he added.
On Monday, Lithuania’s police chief, Arūnas Paulauskas, told reporters that a terrorist attack could not be ruled out.
“This is one of the versions that needs to be investigated and verified. There is still much work ahead of us,” Paulauskas said, according to German press agency DPA.
However, according to CNN, Paulauskas noted that a “technical fault or a human error” was more likely.
The police chief said the fact-finding mission could take a week or even longer, per DPA, adding: “These answers will not come so quickly.”
Benkuskas, the mayor, told BI that “it’s important to follow the reliable information sources and not to give into the panic.”
He added, “We need an investigation. I believe we will find out why we have this tragedy very soon.”
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