A cargo plane crashed this Monday morning (25) outside Vilnius airport, Lithuania. It hit a house and caught fire.
Authorities are investigating what caused the crash and have not ruled out the possibility of terrorism.
See below what we know about the case.
Where did the plane take off from? What was the route?
The cargo plane left Leipzig, Germany, and was supposed to land at Vilnius Airport, when it crashed a few kilometers from the runway.
The aircraft skidded on the ground for several hundred meters before hitting a house, Renatas Pozela, head of the Fire and Rescue Department, told reporters.
Footage from a nearby security camera shows the plane descending, before disappearing from view behind a building. Moments later, a large fireball can be seen in the sky rising from behind the building, followed by a column of black smoke.
Watch the video:
The accident happened at around 5:30 am local time, near Zirniu Street, south of the capital, an airport spokesperson confirmed to CNN .
The fire was brought under control at 7:33 am local time, according to the fire department.
How many victims?
The crash killed one crew member, but three others, including the pilot, survived the accident. A police spokesman said the fatal victim was a Spanish citizen, according to Reuters.
The three rescued crew members — a Lithuanian citizen, a German and a Spaniard — remain in hospital, the Lithuanian Fire and Rescue Department told reporters. CNN.
Additionally, 12 people in the affected home were evacuated to safety, according to authorities.
There were no reported casualties on the ground.
What was the type of aircraft?
The plane was a Boeing 737-400, according to a statement from Swiftair.
The company was operating the aircraft “under contract to DHL,” the logistics company said in a statement to CNN.
What caused the accident?
A spokesman for Lithuania’s National Crisis Management Center said police and prosecutors were investigating the case, but there was nothing to suggest an explosion preceded the accident.
Lithuanian counterintelligence chief Darius Jauniskis told reporters at a press conference that “we cannot reject the possibility of terrorism.”
Still, he highlighted that they could not “make attributions or point fingers, because we don’t have that information.”
Lithuanian Police Chief Arūnas Paulauskas highlighted that the crash was “most likely due to a technical failure or human error”, but that terrorism “cannot be ruled out”, according to the LRT.
“This is one of the versions of the accident, which will be investigated and verified. There is a lot of work ahead. Collecting evidence could take all week, there will be no quick answers”, commented Paulauskas.
Marius Baranauskas, head of the Lithuanian National Aviation Authority, highlighted, according to Reuters, that “in the recording of the conversation between the pilots and the tower, the pilots until the last second did not tell the tower about any extraordinary event.”
“We need to examine the black boxes to find out what was happening on the aircraft,” he added.
What did DHL say?
DHL said the plane “made a forced landing approximately one kilometer from VNO Airport.” She confirmed that four people were on board. “The cause of the accident is still unknown and an investigation is ongoing.”
Could Russian devices have caused the crash?
The Wall Street Journal reported that Western security officials said incendiary devices that exploded in Germany and the United Kingdom in July were part of a covert Russian operation aimed at starting fires aboard cargo and passenger flights bound for the U.S. and Canada.
A spokesman for the German Interior Ministry said there was no indication that the accident was connected to a warning from German authorities earlier this year about packages containing incendiary devices, according to Reuters.
“We will have to wait for the investigations to be completed,” highlighted the Interior Ministry spokesperson.
US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the US Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board “are cooperating in the investigation” and providing support and expertise to Lithuania.
He declined to opine on the possibility of Russian involvement in the crash, saying, “we’re certainly not going to get ahead of ourselves in that investigation and where the facts will lead them, but we are contributing some expertise on this kind of thing to help them with that.”
This content was originally published in Plane crash in Lithuania: See what we know about the case on the CNN Brasil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
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