One killed as DHL cargo plane crashes in Lithuania

A DHL cargo plane crashed into a house in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius, killing a crew member and injuring three people. The plane, which took off from the German city of Leipzig, crashed at about 5.30am local time on Monday into a house near Vilnius airport. All 12 inhabitants of the house survived, according to emergency services. Police said they were investigating the crash, with a technical fault or human error as the most likely cause. Arūnas Paulauskas, head of Lithuanian police, said that the initial assessment was that the plane “did not fall, but landed”. He added that there was no evidence of external damage or anything happening inside the aircraft to cause the crash. One of the surviving crew members confirmed there was no smoke or fire inside the aircraft before the crash, Paulauskas added. DHL, the German parcel group, has been the target of two parcel fires in recent months involving packages sent from Lithuania. The incidents have been linked by the country’s officials to Russian military intelligence. Germany said last month that it had narrowly avoided a plane crash when a parcel destined for an aircraft’s hold burst into flames before the flight at a DHL logistics centre in Leipzig. The UK’s counterterrorism police are also investigating the origins of another package that caught fire at a DHL depot in Birmingham in July. Kęstutis Budrys, national security adviser to Lithuania’s President Gitanas Nausėda, said this month that Russian military intelligence was behind the attacks. Two European security officials said the incidents were designed to test whether flights bound for the US could be attacked in the same manner. DHL said the plane had “made an emergency landing” approximately 1km from Vilnius airport but did not provide more details, adding only that the cause of the accident was unknown and investigations were under way.<br/>