One dead in DHL cargo plane crash

A DHL cargo plane linking Germany and Lithuania crashed while making an emergency landing Monday morning near the airport in Vilnius, authorities not ruling out foul play.

“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. “There were four crew members: two Spaniards, a German and a Lithuanian,” Julija Samorokovskaja, a spokeswoman for the Vilnius police, told AFP. “One of the Spaniards was killed,” while the wounded were hospitalized.

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 have warned that such things are possible, we see an increasingly aggressive Russia, but we cannot yet point fingers at people,” Jauniskis said.

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.

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 5:30 a.m. According to Ausra Rutkauskiene, a company manager in Lithuania, the plane was carrying “consignments from various customers” and not just one.

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.

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.