A state of emergency is being declared in response to a recent cargo plane crash in Vilnius, Lithuania, according to Mayor Valdas Benkunskas. “Today we will urgently declare a state of emergency in the area to ensure that the consequences of the incident are dealt with quickly — the area is cleaned up, hazardous materials are collected,” Benkunskas announced in a Facebook post.
The crash involved a Boeing 737-476(SF) operated by DHL, but the exact cause of the accident remains unclear. DHL Lithuania CEO Mindaugas Pivorūnas told the public broadcaster LRT that the situation was still under investigation.
A spokesperson for Lithuania’s National Crisis Management Centre indicated that “technical problems” are being considered as the most likely cause. Lithuanian police chief Arūnas Paulauskas added that the crash may have resulted from a technical malfunction or human error, but stressed that other possibilities, including terrorism, “cannot be ruled out.”
“This is one of the hypotheses that will be investigated and checked. There is a lot of work to be done. Gathering evidence may take all week, and there will be no quick answers,” Paulauskas said, according to the LRT report.
Earlier this year, DHL had been at the center of another controversy when self-igniting mechanisms shipped from Lithuania caused fires at a logistics center in Leipzig, Germany. According to reports, Western security officials have linked that incident to potential Russian involvement.
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