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Nov 25 2024

DHL cargo plane crashes near Vilnius airport

One crew member was killed after a cargo plane crashed early Monday on the outskirts of Vilnius Airport in Lithuania, skidded into a house and burst into flames.

Remarkably, three others on board the flight, including the pilot, survived the crash, along with 12 people in the house who were safely evacuated, according to local authorities.

The cargo plane flying from Leipzig, Germany was due 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 home, Renatas Pozela, chief of the Fire and Rescue Department, told reporters.

 

“One crew member was found without any signs of life,” said Vilmantas Vitkauskas, head of the country’s National Crisis Management Center, according to public broadcaster LRT.

The three rescued crew members – one Lithuanian national, one German and one Spanish – remain in the hospital, the Lithuanian Fire and Rescue Department told CNN. There were no reported casualties on the ground.

A spokesperson for the National Crisis Management Center later said that police and prosecutors are investigating the incident but there is nothing to suggest an explosion preceded the crash. Lithuania’s Counter-intelligence chief Darius Jauniskis told reporters at a news conference: “We cannot reject the possibility of terrorism. … But at the moment we can’t make attributions or point fingers, because we don’t have such information.” Read more

 

Source: CNN