A drone with explosives was found at Germany’s Leipzig/Halle Airport and the device was defused, authorities said on Wednesday, in an incident that the country’s top security official said posed a “new quality of danger.”Both the runways at the major freight hub were closed and several flights, including one passenger plane, were diverted to other airports after a flying object was sighted nearby shortly before midnight on Tuesday.An anti-explosives robot was deployed to check an object near the south runway.
Men work on a Ukrainian Antonov transport aircraft at Leipzig/Halle Airport in Schkeuditz, Germany, yesterday.
Regional police and prosecutors later said that an airport employee discovered a drone near the airport’s south runway with “an unknown explosive device” and the object was examined by police.They removed its detonator.
That the drone was carrying explosives “is a new quality of danger,” German Minister of the Interior Alexander Dobrindt told reporters at the airport.“Drone sightings, drone threats including in a hybrid context, are something we know from the past,” Dobrindt said. “That a drone armed with explosives is at an airport is a new threat scenario.”Dobrindt described what happened as “a hybrid attack scenario,” but did not offer more details of authorities’ assessment or specify who might be responsible.Questions about details of the explosives, the origin of the drone and who was behind the incident were a matter for the ongoing investigation, he said.The regional interior minister of Saxony state, Armin Schuster, said authorities were looking for parts of a possible second drone.Police and prosecutors said an apparent second flying object collided with a freight airplane after it aborted a landing at Leipzig/Halle because the runway was closed.The plane flew to another German airport, Hannover, about 200km to the northwest, where officials found slight damage.The north runway at Leipzig/Halle was reopened after about two hours. The south runway was scheduled to be out of action for maintenance on Wednesday.Authorities said there was no danger to passengers or airport employees and flights were not affected during the day.Photos from the scene showed police technicians with the robot near a Ukrainian plane.The airport is a leading cargo hub and the planes there include Ukrainian Antonov transport aircraft.
