At least one dead as DHL cargo plane crashes into house in Lithuania just weeks after suspicious ‘Russia-linked’ device found in UK site

A DHL cargo plane crashed into a house as it made its approach to land at Lithuania’s Vilnius airport, killing one person and injuring three others on the aircraft.

The flight was operated by SWIFT airline on behalf of DHL and had taken off from Leipzig, Germany before the plane crashed around 3.30am.

All of the people in the house survived, he added. The spokesperson said there was nothing to suggest an explosion preceded the crash.

He said: “At the moment we don’t have any data that there was an explosion.”

Police told a press conference 12 people had been evacuated from the house hit by the plane. Rescue services said the plane hit the ground and slid at least 100 metres before crashing into the building.

Firefighters were seen at 5.30am pouring water onto a smoking building some 1.3 km north of the airport runway.

A large police and ambulance presence was seen nearby and several nearby major streets were cordoned off.

The flight had departed from Leipzig at 2.08am Flightradar24 said on the X social media platform.

It comes after British counter-terrorism police said shortly afterwards that they were investigating a warehouse fire in July, caused by a package catching alight, and liaising with other European law enforcement agencies to see if there was a connection with similar incidents elsewhere.

An incendiary device plot that caused fires at two parcels warehouses in July, one in Leipzig and another in Birmingham.

Brandon Fried, executive director of the Airforwarders Association, which represents the air freight industry in the US, described the incendiary bomb incidents as disconcerting given the suspicion of Russian state involvement.

He told The Guardian: “It looks like the goal is simply to disrupt the supply chain, create havoc and simply to scare people. They want people to lose confidence in the system.”

More to come…