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Evening Standard
Evening Standard
World
Josh Salisbury

DHL cargo plane crash: At least one person dead as aircraft comes down in Lithuania hitting house near airport

A DHL cargo plane has crashed into a house near the Lithuanian capital, killing at least one person.

The head of the country's police said the plane crashed shortly before landing at Vilnius airport on Monday morning.

Lithuanian public broadcaster LRT, quoting an emergency official, said two people had been taken to hospital after the crash in Vilnius, and one was later pronounced dead.

LRT said the aircraft smashed into a two-storey home near the airport.

(AFP via Getty Images)

Officials said that they could not rule out terrorism, but said so far there was no indication that was the case.

Police Commissioner-General Renatas Pozela said: “It fell a few kilometres before the airport, it just skidded for a few hundred metres. Its debris somewhat caught a residential house.

"Residential infrastructure around the house was on fire, and the house was slightly damaged, but we managed to evacuate people."

The Lithuanian airport authority identified the aircraft as a "DHL cargo plane flying from Leipzig, Germany, to Vilnius Airport."

It posted on the social platform X that city services including a fire truck were on site.

A Lithuanian medic takes a photo on his mobile phone of the wreckage of a cargo plane (AFP via Getty Images)

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 a mile short of the runway.

Authorities did not immediately offer a cause for the crash, which happened at 5.30am local time (3.30am GMT).

The weather at the airport was around freezing temperature, with clouds before sunrise and winds of around 18mph.

DHL Group, headquartered in Bonn, Germany, has not immediately commented.

The DHL aircraft was operated by Swiftair, a Madrid-based contractor.

The Boeing 737 was 31 years old, which is considered by experts to be an older airframe. However, that Is not unusual for cargo flights.

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