During the crash, followed by a fire, a house caught fire. The authorities specified that all residents had been evacuated safely.
DHL confirmed that the plane belonged to them. “I can confirm that more than one shipment was transported, these were shipments from various customers,” according to Ausra Rutkauskien, a manager at DHL Lithuania. And according to a press release from DHL Germany, the plane, which was connecting Leipzig in Germany to the Lithuanian capital, “made an emergency landing approximately one kilometer” from Vilnius airport.
No hypothesis excluded
Authorities who have opened an investigation are not yet ruling out any reason for the crash, including an act of terrorism.
“It is premature to associate it (the crash) with anything,” according to Darius Jauniskis, head of Lithuanian intelligence services. “We are working with our foreign partners to obtain all possible information. We cannot rule out the possibility of a terrorist act. We warned that such things were possible, we see an increasingly aggressive Russia, […] but we can’t yet […] pointing the finger at people,” he added.
Russia and the DHL affair
At the beginning of November, several people were arrested in Lithuania and Poland in the case of incendiary packages sent by plane to different European countries, the traces of which could, according to several capitals, lead to Russia.
This summer, packages containing incendiary devices were found in the warehouses of the logistics group DHL in Germany and Great Britain, where they caught fire. In Poland, a package also set fire to a DHL truck, according to the daily Gazeta Wyborcza.
An adviser to the Lithuanian president for national security then attributed this operation to Russia. “We need to neutralize and dismantle the source, and we know who is behind these operations. This is Russian military intelligence,” Kestutis Budrys said.
