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A DHL plane crashed into a building in Vilnius. (Image: east2west)
A DHL cargo plane crashed into a house Monday morning near the Lithuanian capital, killing at least one person.
Lithuanian public broadcaster LRT, quoting an emergency official, said two people had been taken to the hospital after the crash, and one was later pronounced dead. LRT said the aircraft smashed into a two-story home near Vilnius International Airport.
The Lithuanian airport authority identified the aircraft as a DHL cargo plane arriving from Leipzig, Germany. It posted on the social platform X that city services, including a fire truck, were on site.
Flight-tracking data from FlightRadar24 showed the aircraft turned north of the airport, lining up for landing, before crashing a little more than 1.5 kilometres (1 mile) short of the runway.
Authorities did not immediately offer a cause for the crash, which happened just before 5:30 a.m. local time. The weather at the airport was around freezing, with clouds before sunrise and winds around 30 kph (18 mph).
Wreckage seen at the site of the crash in Vilnius. (Image: Getty)
Emergency services rushed to the scene of the crash - the pilot of the plane died in the incident. (Image: Getty)
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DHL Group is headquartered in Bonn, Germany. Swiftair, a Madrid-based contractor, operated the DHL aircraft.
The Boeing 737 was 31 years old, which experts consider an older airframe, though that’s not unusual for cargo flights.
The news comes following reports earlier this year that incendiary devices spontaneously combusted at DHL logistics centres in Leipzig, Germany, and Birmingham, UK.
Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England.
Poland previously said that it has arrested four people suspected of being linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and is searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general, Nida Grunskiene, said an unspecified number of people were detained in several countries, offering no elaboration.
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