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One dead and three injured in Lithuania cargo-jet crash

 At least one person has died and three others have been injured after a cargo plane crashed near Vilnius airport in Lithuania in the early hours of Monday.

The Boeing 737, operated for DHL by the Spanish cargo airline Swiftair, crashed near a house as it was on its final approach for landing, local authorities said.

All 12 people have been safely evacuated from the property, police said.

The cause of the crash is still unclear but the defence minister said there were no initial signs it was sabotage or terrorism.

The aircraft departed from DHL’s hub at Leipzig Airport in Germany just after 03:00 local time (02:00 GMT) and crashed around an hour and a half later, according to Flightradar24. DHL said the plane had made an “emer­gency landing”.

Images from the scene show chunks of blackened wreckage scattered among the trees.

“The plane was landing, but it fell a few kilometres before the airport, skidded for several hun­dred meters, its wreckage caught a residential building,” said Renatas Pozela, a leading police official.

One person in the four-member crew died, he added.

It was not immediately clear how many people in total were on the flight.

Mr Pozela said a nearby house was “slightly damaged” and infra­structure near it caught on fire, but all residents were safely evacuated.

Both the Lithuanian authorities and DHL have started separate investigations into what happened.

—BBC

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