At least one dead in Vilnius after cargo plane crashes into house near Lithuanian capital
DHL cargo plane crashes into house near Lithuanian capital
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Your support makes all the difference.A DHL cargo plane has crashed into a house near Lithuania’s capital, killing at least one person.
Lithuania’s police chief said the plane crashed shortly before landing at Vilnius airport early on Monday morning.
“It fell a few kilometers before the airport, it just skidded for a few hundred meters, its debris somewhat caught a residential house,” said police commissioner-general, Renatas Požėla.
“Residential infrastructure around the house was on fire, and the house was slightly damaged, but we managed to evacuate people.”
Two people were taken to the hospital after the crash, and one was later pronounced dead, Lithuanian’s public broadcaster LRT reported, quoting an emergency official.
All of the people in the house survived, a spokesperson for the governmental National Crisis Management Centre said, adding that there was nothing to suggest an explosion preceded the crash.
“At the moment we don’t have any data that there was an explosion”, he said.
Twelve people had been evacuated from the house hit by the plane, police said.
The Lithuanian airport authority identified the aircraft as a DHL cargo plane arriving from Leipzig, Germany. It said that city services, including firefighters, were at the scene.
Flight-tracking data from FlightRadar24 showed the aircraft made a turn to the north of the airport, lining up for landing, before crashing a little more than 1.5 kilometres short of the runway.
Authorities did not immediately offer a cause for the crash, which happened just before 5.30am local time. Weather at the airport was around freezing temperature, with clouds before sunrise and winds around 18mph.
DHL Group, headquartered in Bonn, Germany, did not immediately return a call for comment.
The DHL aircraft was operated by Swiftair, a Madrid-based contractor. The carrier could not be immediately reached.
The Boeing 737 was 31 years old, which is considered by experts to be an older airframe, which is not unusual for cargo flights.
Additional reporting by AP