DHL plane crash: German leaders ask questions about sabotage

CNN
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German leaders raised the possibility that the violent crash of a cargo plane in Lithuania on Monday was the result of sabotage or hybrid warfare.

The cargo plane was flying from Leipzig and was scheduled to land at Vilnius Airport when it crashed a few kilometers from the runway. The plane skidded on the ground for several hundred meters before hitting a residential building, Lithuanian authorities said.

When asked on Monday evening whether the crash was the result of hybrid warfare, Chancellor Olaf Scholz told ZDF: “We’re looking at it closely, we can’t say at the moment, but it could be – there are a lot of them . “bad forms of hybrid warfare that we see in Germany.”

Scholz said the cause of the crash “needs to be closely investigated.” But we will not make allegations until we can prove it.”

His comments follow similar statements from Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, who, according to Reuters, told reporters at a G7 summit: “The fact that we, together with our Lithuanian and Spanish partners, now have to seriously ask ourselves whether this was an accident (or) another one “This hybrid incident shows the volatile times we are currently living in, even in the middle of Europe.”

On Tuesday, Lithuanian authorities downplayed the prospect, insisting that no evidence of sabotage had yet been found. “Our initial information does not indicate that we need to investigate more serious measures,” prosecutor Arturas Urbelis said in a statement, according to Reuters.

“We may find signs of other types of activity in our investigation,” he added.

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board is also sending its own personnel to assist in the investigation, alongside representatives from Boeing and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, Reuters reported.

Footage from a nearby surveillance camera shows the plane descending before disappearing out of sight behind a building. Moments later, a large fireball can be seen in the sky rising behind the building, followed by a cloud of black smoke.

One crew member died in the crash. According to local authorities, three other passengers on board the plane survived, including the pilot, as well as 12 people inside who were safely evacuated.

Lithuanian counterintelligence chief Darius Jauniskis told reporters at a news conference: “We cannot rule out the possibility of terrorism. … But right now we can’t make any attributions or point fingers because we don’t have that kind of information.”

Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal reported that incendiary devices detonated in July in Leipzig, Germany and the United Kingdom were part of a covert Russian operation aimed at boarding cargo and passenger flights to the United States and Canada to set fire. Some European officials later supported these claims, but Moscow rejected them.

“I can say that this is part of unconventional kinetic operations against NATO countries carried out by Russian military intelligence,” Kestutis Budrys, a national security adviser to Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda, told Reuters after the WSJ report.

“We are seeing that these operations are escalating: their focus is shifting … to damage to infrastructure and to actions that could ultimately lead to the death of people,” Budrys said.

At a press conference, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the WSJ’s reporting “incomprehensible hoaxes that are never supported by credible information.”

The cargo plane that crashed on Monday was a Swiftair plane that was “operating on behalf of DHL,” the logistics company said in a statement to CNN.

DHL said the plane “made an emergency landing approximately one kilometer from VNO airport.” It was confirmed that four people were on board. “The cause of the accident is still unknown and an investigation is ongoing,” DHL said.

According to a statement from Swiftair, the aircraft was a Boeing 737-400.

According to Vilnius Mayor Valdas Benkunskas, the plane narrowly missed hitting the house directly and instead crashed into the nearby yard, LRT reported.

Lithuanian police chief Arūnas Paulauskas said the incident was “most likely due to a technical error or human error” but that terrorism “cannot be ruled out,” according to LRT.

This story has been updated with additional developments.