Germany fears outside hand in deadly Lithuania jet crash

A DHL cargo plane crashed on Monday near the Lithuanian capital's airport, killing one crew member, with Germany raising the possibility of outside involvement in the disaster.

While authorities stopped short of linking the tragedy to a recent series of sabotage cases, Lithuanian officials have in past weeks probed alleged acts of incendiary devices being planted on cargo planes.

The plane, which was coming from the German city of Leipzig, crashed about one km rom Vilnius airport having hit several buildings as it skidded several hundred metres, according to the police and the DHL logistics company.

Images from the crash site showed debris from the plane and packages on fire scattered across a residential area cordoned off by the emergency services.

"So far, there are no signs or evidence suggesting this was sabotage or a terrorist act," Lithuania's Defence Minister Laurynas Kasciunas told reporters, adding the probe to establish the cause could take "about a week".

State Security Department chief Darius Jauniskis said that while the Baltic country had seen "an increasingly aggressive Russia and could not "rule out the case of terrorism... we cannot make any attributions or point fingers yet".

Echoing that caution, Lithuania's Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte urged people in a social media post to "refrain from jumping to conclusions" during the investigation.

But German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said "we must now seriously ask ourselves whether this was an accident or whether it was another hybrid incident".

The term "hybrid" is commonly used to describe attacks that do not use conventional military tactics, such as sabotaging infrastructure or launching cyberattacks.

Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, European countries have often used the term to describe actions against them that they believe originate from Moscow.

Germany's Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said later in Berlin there were "no findings" as yet that indicated there had been an explosive charge on the aircraft that could have caused the crash.

It was not immediately clear what caused the crash.