The moment a DHL cargo flight crash landed and sparked a massive inferno as it skidded into a house in Lithuania this morning has been revealed in a dramatic video clip.

The Boeing 737-400 had travelled from the German city of Leipzig to the Lithuanian capital and was just one mile from touching down on the runway when the fiery crash occurred around 5.30am local time (3.30am GMT).

A security camera overlooking the scene captured the plane gliding in toward Vilnius Airport at a dangerously low altitude.

Suddenly the aircraft pitched to the right with the wingtip angling down and dove into the ground, erupting in a huge fireball that lit up the early morning sky.

Germany’s foreign minister later said it could be have been an accident or a hybrid attack in ‘volatile times’.

Shocking images from the scene showed debris strewn about frost-covered ground as firefighters raced to extinguish the blaze after the plane skidded hundreds of metres through a wood before smashing into a two-storey building.

The incident follows reports in recent months that mysterious explosions had occurred at DHL warehouses in Leipzig and Birmingham amid fears of a Russian covert sabotage operation intended to explode aircraft flying in the West.

Lithuanian Police Commissioner General Arunas Paulauskas said investigators have not ruled out the possibility of a terrorist act.

‘This is one of the versions that must be studied and checked,’ he said, but added: ‘It was most likely due to a technical fault or a human error.’

State Security Department chief Darius Jauniskis said: ‘We cannot rule out the case of terrorism. We have warned that such things are possible, we see an increasingly aggressive Russia… but we cannot make any attributions or point fingers yet.’

Miraculously, both pilots survived the ordeal, albeit with significant injuries, according to Paulauskas, who told national broadcaster LRT that rescuers managed to pull them from the wreckage.

One member of the four-person crew – a man with Spanish nationality – was reportedly found dead at the scene, Lithuanian media reported, but 12 people were evacuated from the stricken building without incident.

The cause of the crash remains a mystery as Lithuania’s National Crisis Management Centre deployed experts to investigate.

There was no data to suggest that there had been an explosion prior to the crash, head of the centre Vilmantas Vitkauskas told LRT.

‘According to the initial version, the incident may be related to technical problems. However, it is too early to talk about anything more precise,’ he said.

Other officials were also careful not to jump to conclusions.

‘It is premature to associate (the crash) with anything or to make any attributions,’ Jauniskis told reporters.

‘In the current geopolitical context, we look at every incident differently than before, but I ask you to refrain from jumping to conclusions,’ the outgoing prime minister, Ingrida Simonyte, said in a statement on social media.

Flight-tracking data from FlightRadar24 showed the aircraft made a turn to the north of the airport and lined up for landing before crashing a little more than 1.5 kilometres, or one mile, short of the runway.

‘The plane was due to land at Vilnius airport and crashed a few kilometres away,’ Renatas Pozela, the head of the firefighting and emergency services unit said, confirming that one person in the four-member crew died.

‘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,’ Pozela said.

A police spokesperson told LRT that 12 people were safely evacuated from the building with no injuries reported.

One eyewitness, who gave her name only as Svaja, ran to a window when a light as bright as a red sun filled her room, and then heard an explosion followed by flashes and black smoke.

‘I saw a fireball,’ she told an AP reporter at the scene. ‘My first thought is that a world (war) has begun and it’s time to grab the documents and run somewhere to a shelter, to a basement.’

‘We were woken by an explosion. Through the window, we saw the wave of explosions and a cloud of fire. Like fireworks,’ Stanislovas Jakimavicius, who lives near the crash site, told AFP.

German logistics company DHL said the aircraft was operated by its partner SwiftAir and had been attempting an ’emergency landing’.

‘We can confirm that today, at approximately 4.30 am CET, a Swiftair aircraft, operated by a service partner on behalf of DHL, performed an emergency landing about one kilometre from VNO Airport (Vilnius, Lithuania) while en route from LEJ Airport (Leipzig, Germany) to VNO Airport,’ it said in a statement.

A German transport ministry official said the country’s Bureau of Aircraft Accident Investigation ‘will support the investigation on site’.

Defence Minister Laurynas Kasciunas told reporters that the probe to establish the cause of the crash could take ‘about a week’.

‘So far, there are no signs or evidence suggesting this was sabotage or a terrorist act,’ he said.

Local Police Chief Paulauskas said investigators had gone to the hospital to talk to the pilots.

Meanwhile, Vilnius Mayor Valdas Benkunskas declared an emergency situation following the crash, with traffic restricted on several roads near the airport and crash site.

‘We will urgently declare an emergency situation in the area to ensure the rapid liquidation of the consequences of the accident – cleaning up the territory, collecting harmful materials,’ Benkunskas said in a statement released this morning.

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

An airport spokesperson said: ‘The city’s special services are working at the scene and leading the rescue efforts, as well as crews from the Vilnius Airport Fire Service.’

The DHL aircraft, a Boeing 737-400, 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, though that is not unusual for cargo flights.

DHL official Ausra Rutkauskien confirmed the plane belonged to the company, while Boeing offered a short statement saying it was ready to help with investigations into the crash.

Weather at Vilnius airport this morning was around freezing temperature, with clouds before sunrise and winds said to be at 30kph (18 mph).

At the scene of the crash, frost was seen coating the ground not already covered by the wreckage of the plane or burning, ruined goods.

Vilnius Airport continued operating as usual following the incident, though some flights were delayed.

Western officials have previously this month expressed fears that Russia is behind plots to plant bombs on passenger planes flying to the US and Canada after electronic massagers exploded in a warehouse.

Two incendiary devices were shipped via a DHL logistics centre on July 22 to Birmingham, England, and Leipzig, Germany, resulting in a fire.

Four people were arrested in connection with the blaze and charged with participating in sabotage or terrorist operations on behalf of a foreign intelligence agency.

No injuries were reported, with the incident dealt with by staff and the local fire brigade.

But investigators believe there could have been far more serious consequences had the devices ignited while in flight. The plane’s takeoff was delayed, preventing such an incident from taking place.

Head of Poland’s foreign intelligence agency, Pawel Szota, blamed Russia, although a statement from the Polish prosecutor’s office did not name a foreign government suspected of directing the operations.

Images released by the Wall Street Journal, provided by an unnamed European security official, appear to show the massage pillows, suspect and the moment of the explosion.

The only official statement in the UK about the alleged plot was made last month, when counter-terror police confirmed a device had caught fire in Birmingham, nobody was hurt, and it was dealt with ‘by staff and the local fire brigade at the time’.

Russia denied involvement in the alleged plot.

‘These are traditional unsubstantiated insinuations from the media,’ Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told the Wall Street Journal.

Concerns over Russia’s suspected involvement come as Western officials are increasingly fearing the country may be responsible for similar sabotage acts.

German intelligence service chief Thomas Haldenwang previously said Russian ‘aggression’ was ‘putting people’s lives at risk’ as well as affecting ‘all areas of our free society’.

Meanwhile, defence officials have warned that Europe is not ready for Russia’s tactics of hybrid warfare

A former senior European official told the Guardian that the EU is ‘totally unprepared’ to confront Moscow in its campaign of ‘hybrid’ warfare, lacking the resources to effectively counter sabotage, arson, assassination and attacks on infrastructure.

They said Europe could expect more ‘hybrid’ attacks to unfold on the continent in the wake of the decision to permit usage of long-range US and UK-supplied missiles against targets deep inside Russia.

Russia has been accused of trying to destabilise the West and allies since the war in Ukraine began by allegedly ‘weaponising mass migration’ along its western border, influencing elections in Moldova and Georgia, jamming aircraft GPS and even sending exploding 𝓈ℯ𝓍 toys to Western Europe.

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