Authorities should “seriously” consider whether the crash of a cargo plane in Lithuania was an act of “hybrid” warfare, Germany’s foreign minister has said.
The Boeing 737-400 aircraft carrying DHL parcels fell just over 1.5 kilometres short of the runway and crashed near a residential building in Vilnius. The aircraft was landing at too high a speed. According to one version, the pilot became ill, so he was unable to reduce speed. As a result of the crash of the aircraft, one person was killed, three were injured.
In the yard, where the aircraft crashed, a strong fire started. Rescuers evacuated 12 people from the building, none of them were injured. Fire and rescue department chief Renatas Pozela said:
“The residential infrastructure around the house was engulfed in flames, the house itself suffered minor damage, but we managed to evacuate people.”
Lithuanian Police Commissioner General Arūnas Paulauskas said that a terrorist attack was among the possible causes of the crash. Paulauskas said:
“Probably, it can never be ruled out. This is one of the versions, which should be studied, checked.”
The commissioner-general added that technical or human error is also among the versions. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said:
“The fact that we, together with our Lithuanian and Spanish partners, must now seriously ask ourselves whether this was an accident or, after last week, another hybrid incident shows what volatile times we are currently living in, even in the center of Europe. German authorities are co-operating very closely with Lithuanian authorities to get to the truth.”
Earlier this year, an incendiary device sent from Lithuania via DHL caused a fire at a logistics centre in Leipzig.
Last summer, unknown people sent two parcels containing incendiary devices via DHL. One of them caught fire in Leipzig in Germany before being loaded onto a cargo plane, while the other caught fire at a DHL warehouse in Birmingham in the UK. Both parcels were sent from Lithuania to the same recipient in the UK.
