At least one person has died and another has been taken to hospital after a DHL cargo plane crashed near Vilnius Airport, Lithuania early Monday morning.
At 5:30am local time (3:30am GMT), the aircraft crashed short of the runway at Vilnius Airport, according to Lithuania’s public broadcaster. The aircraft is believed to have hit the ground and skidded, at least, 100 metres before hitting a house. All residents of the property survived the incident.
The aircraft, a Boeing 737 freighter, operated by Swiftair on behalf of DHL, was flying from Leipzig Airport to Vilnius.
Emergency services were quick to the scene, extinguishing the blaze and cordoning off the crash site. The cause of the accident is not currently known, with the head of Lithuania’s national crisis management centre investigating. However, Lithuania Police Commissioner General Arunas Paulauskas told reporters “it was most likely due to a technical fault or a human error.” Although, he did not rule out the possibility of a terrorist act.
“The plane was landing and failed to reach the runway, these are the facts,” Paulauskas continued. “There is a lot of work ahead. The collection of evidence can take the whole week, there will not be quick answers.”
Vilmantas Vitkauskas, head of the crisis centre, stated that “the incident may be related to technical problems. However, it is too early to talk about anything more precise.”
“At this stage, based on what we know, it’s probably too early to link it to anything or make any attributions,” Darius Jauniskis, head of Lithuania’s State Security Department added. “We certainly see Russia becoming more aggressive and foreign partners have also talked about dangers and cases of sabotage or the threat of terrorism. We cannot rule this out either.”
“In the current geopolitical context, we look at every incident differently than before, but I ask you to refrain from jumping to conclusions,’ Lithuanian prime minister Ingrida Simonyte said in a statement on social media.
In a statement, DHL said: “We can confirm that today at around 4:30 am CET an aircraft of Swift Air, a third-party carrier operating under contract for DHL, which was on its way from LEJ Airport (Leipzig, Germany) to VNO Airport (Vilnius, Lithuania), made a forced landing about one kilometer from VNO Airport. There were a total of four people on board and our thoughts are with them and their relatives. The cause of the accident is still unknown and an investigation is already underway”.
