A DHL cargo plane linking Germany and Lithuania crashed while making an emergency landing on the morning of Monday, November 25 near the airport in Vilnius, the authorities not excluding the runway of a criminal act.
“The plane was supposed to land at Vilnius airport and crashed a few kilometers from the airport,” Renatas Pozela, head of the fire and rescue service, told reporters, adding that one of the four members of the crew was found dead.
“The four crew members have been found”
“All four crew members have been found. Unfortunately, one of them was pronounced dead,” he said.
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,” Darius Jauniskis, head of Lithuanian intelligence services, told the press. “We are working with our foreign partners to obtain all possible information. We cannot rule out the possibility of a terrorist act,” he said.
“We warned that such things were possible, we see an increasingly aggressive Russia, […] but we can't yet […] pointing the finger at people,” said Mr. Jauniskis.
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.
A house on fire
During the crash, followed by a fire, a house caught fire. The authorities specified that all residents had been evacuated safely.
An AFP photographer present on site was able to see the wreckage of the aircraft and the house, as well as dozens of packages scattered on the ground.
According to a press release from DHL Germany, the plane which linked Leipzig in Germany to the Lithuanian capital “made an emergency landing approximately one kilometer” from Vilnius airport. The accident occurred around 03:30 GMT.
According to Ausra Rutkauskiene, a company manager in Lithuania, the plane was carrying “consignments from various customers” and not just one.
Incendiary packages found this summer in DHL warehouses
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. It is the Russian military intelligence services,” Kestutis Budrys said.
German intelligence had previously also pointed the finger at the Russian Federation.
On October 14 during a hearing in the Bundestag, the head of German Domestic Intelligence (BfV) Thomas Haldenwang openly accused Moscow of being behind the “DHL affair”, particularly in the case of a package that caught fire at a DHL carrier center in Leipzig (east) in July.