German police deployed a bomb disposal robot at an airport overnight after a drone was found on the tarmac near a Ukrainian cargo plane, sparking alarm and forcing the diversion of numerous flights.
One aircraft that had to abort its scheduled landing at Leipzig-Halle airport then collided mid-air with an unknown object nearby but later landed safely elsewhere, the government said.
It was later confirmed that a drone equipped with explosives and a detonator had been found near an aircraft belonging to the Ukrainian cargo carrier Antonov Airlines, a NATO spokesperson said on Wednesday,
According to the Kyiv Independent news site, the suspicious object was destroyed in a controlled explosion.
Police spokesperson Olaf Hoppe told Euronews that, at the same time as the sighting, an object was found in the area of the southern runway which the federal police examined. He declined to confirm that a drone had been sighted.
X-ray analysis revealed it to be a drone.
The airport in eastern Germany plays a key role in the transport of military goods, including by the German military and NATO allies, and also serves as a base for Ukraine’s Antonov Airlines.
Video footage from a local news agency showed the bomb disposal robot near an Antonov plane painted with the Ukrainian colours yellow and blue and with the words “Be Brave Like Kherson” written on the side, a reference to a Ukrainian region battered by Russian strikes.
The Bild daily reported that the plane that collided with an unknown object mid-air was a DHL cargo aircraft that was hit about six kilometres away, sustaining minor damage on the nose that was discovered when it later landed safely at Hanover airport.
German police first reported on Wednesday morning that a “security-related incident” had temporarily halted flights to the airport.
“Shortly before midnight, an unidentified flying object was sighted near Leipzig-Halle Airport, prompting the diversion of several aircraft, including a passenger plane, to other airports”, they said.
A passenger plane from Mallorca as well as several cargo planes heading there had to be sent to other locations.
“In addition, an object was detected near the southern runway, which was initially examined by the federal police, a process that involved the deployment of an explosives disposal robot,” police said, without saying whether it was detonated.
Regular traffic at the airport resumed in the early hours of Wednesday but only on the northern runway, while investigators looked for clues on the southern runway.
Series of drone sightings
Germany and other European countries have repeatedly observed drones flying over sensitive sites such as airports, military bases and industrial plants.
Authorities in Germany, one of Ukraine’s biggest military supporters, have said they suspect Russia of orchestrating many of the incidents as part of a campaign of sabotage, espionage and disinformation.
In July 2024 a parcel burst into flames on the ground at Leipzig airport before it could be loaded onto a DHL cargo plane, part of what security services treated as a suspected Moscow-linked arson sabotage plot.
Russia has denied being behind any such incidents.
Last year a Chinese national was convicted for passing on information about flight schedules and cargo movements at Leipzig-Halle airport to a man spying for Beijing.
In October last year, local media reported that a laser installation had been deployed near Munich airport to protect the facility from drone sightings. That came after the airport was closed for two consecutive days over suspicious drone sightings.
In November, flight operations at Berlin’s Brandenburg Airport were interrupted for around two hours due to a drone sighting in its airspace.
Incidents of unidentified drones flying in Germany’s airspace are on the rise with the country’s air navigation service DFS saying 144 drone overflights were logged last year, with 35 incidents clustered around Frankfurt Airport.
Additional sources • AP
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