Drone Carrying Explosives Found at German Cargo Airport, Runways Closed

BERLIN — A drone carrying explosives was found at Germany's Leipzig/Halle Airport and the device was defused, authorities said Wednesday, in an incident the country's top security official described as a "new quality of danger."

Both runways at the major freight hub were closed and several flights, including one passenger plane, were diverted after a flying object was sighted nearby shortly before midnight Tuesday. An anti-explosives robot was deployed to examine an object near the south runway.

Regional police and prosecutors later said an airport employee discovered a drone near the south runway carrying "an unknown explosive device." Police examined the object and removed its detonator.

German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt, who interrupted his vacation to travel to the scene, told reporters at the airport that a drone carrying explosives "is a new quality of danger."

"Drone sightings, drone threats including in a hybrid context, are something we know from the past," he said. "That a drone armed with explosives is at an airport is a new threat scenario."

Dobrindt called the episode "a hybrid attack scenario" but did not offer further details of the authorities' assessment or say who might be responsible. He said questions about the explosives, the drone's origin and who was behind the incident were matters for the ongoing investigation.

Armin Schuster, the interior minister of Saxony state, said authorities were searching for parts of a possible second drone. Police and prosecutors said an apparent second flying object collided with a freight airplane after the aircraft aborted a landing at Leipzig/Halle because the runway was closed. The plane flew on to Hannover, about 125 miles (200 kilometers) to the northwest, where officials found slight damage.

The north runway at Leipzig/Halle reopened after about two hours. The south runway had already been scheduled for maintenance Wednesday. Authorities said there was no danger to passengers or airport employees, and daytime flights were not affected.

Photos from the scene showed police technicians with an explosives-disposal robot near a Ukrainian plane. The airport is a leading cargo hub, and aircraft based there include Ukrainian Antonov transport planes.

NATO said it was aware of the incident but referred questions to German authorities.

In 2024, an incendiary device ignited at a logistics center at the same airport and set fire to a freight container, part of a plot that Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind. Western officials have accused Russia and its proxies of staging dozens of attacks and other incidents across Europe since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than four years ago.