Suspected drone blows up in Lithuania near Latvian border

A suspected drone exploded in northern Lithuania near the Latvian border on Sunday, Oct. 18, after NATO fighter jets were scrambled to track it, and debris damaged a car door on a highway without injuring anyone.

The incident set off air alerts in several Lithuanian regions between about 6 a.m. and 8 a.m. local time and prompted Latvia’s National Armed Forces to send a mobile alert at 7:40 a.m. to residents of the Bauska, Aizkraukle and Ogre municipalities, reported LSM, Latvia’s public broadcaster. The warning was lifted at 8:12 a.m.

The Latvian armed forces said the fighters “did not shoot down the suspected drone” and that the object may have detonated on its own, LSM reported. The site is in Pasvalys district. Lithuanian Prime Minister Mindaugas Sinkevicius said a person driving from Birzai to Pasvalys heard an explosion, and that authorities do not yet know whether the object carried explosives or whether it blew up in the air or after hitting an obstacle such as a tree.

Lithuanian Defence Minister Robertas Kaunas said the pilots could not visually identify the object because of difficult weather, according to a report carried by Yahoo News. Soldiers were sent to the spot where the radio signal was lost.

The origin has not been confirmed. LSM reported that Lithuanian officials believe the object was most likely a Ukrainian drone that strayed or was redirected during Kyiv’s strikes on the St. Petersburg region. Ukrainian drones hit a St. Petersburg oil terminal Oct. 18, as we reported. LSM, citing Lithuanian broadcaster LRT, said the first alerts were sounded after the object entered from Polish airspace, and Poland is investigating a possible airspace violation and searching south of Lublin. We have not independently verified these accounts.

The incident is the latest along NATO’s eastern flank, where drone incursions linked to Russia’s war in Ukraine have become more frequent. A day earlier, on Oct. 17, Romanian F-16s shot down two jet-powered Geran-family attack drones over the Black Sea, Romania’s defence ministry said. Defence Minister Radu Miruta said the first was downed within two minutes of entering Romanian airspace, 25 kilometres south-east of Sulina.

For Canada, the Baltic region is where Canadian soldiers are deployed. Canada leads the NATO multinational battle group in Latvia, which borders the area where Sunday’s alert was issued. The Canadian government had not commented on the Lithuanian incident in the reporting reviewed for this story. Earlier this month, Latvia sought wider border force powers after an armed incident, and NATO’s top general has set out a “block, blunt, break” war plan.

Lithuanian authorities are investigating at the scene, and the cause, origin and any warhead are the questions to be answered next.

Via LSM and Yahoo News. Read the original report on LSM.

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