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.
