An unidentified flying object crashed into a cornfield and exploded in eastern Poland early Wednesday, the country’s news agency PAP reported.
Local police said they received reports of the crash around 2 a.m. and found burned metal and plastic debris at the scene, near the village of Osiny. As a result of the explosion, windows were broken in some houses but nobody was injured, PAP reported.
Poland’s Armed Forces Operational Command said Wednesday on social media that no violations of Polish airspace from neighboring Ukraine or Belarus were recorded overnight.
Officials initially said the explosion may have been caused by a part of an old engine with a propeller.
Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz later said the object was most likely a drone, adding that an analysis was underway to determine whether it was a military or smuggling one, PAP reported.
“I was sitting in my room at night, around midnight, maybe, and I heard something just bang,” local resident Pawel Sudowski told local news website Lukow.tv. “It exploded so loudly that the whole house simply shook.”
Lublin District Prosecutor Grzegorz Trusiewicz told reporters several investigators — both civilian and military — were examining the crash site.
“We have a lot of manpower, we have the army to help us. I hope that we will be able to finish the operation by the evening,” Trusiewicz said.
Since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than three years ago, there have been a number of intrusions into Polish airspace, raising alarm in the European Union and NATO member state and reminding people how close the war is.
In 2023, a Russian missile went through Polish airspace near the Ukrainian border during one of Russia’s barrages.
In 2022, a Ukrainian air defence missile fell on the Polish village of Przewodow, near the border, killing two people.
Earlier this year, unidentified crashed objects were found on the ground in two locations in Poland. Authorities said it was possible those objects came from a SpaceX rocket after debris entered the atmosphere over Poland.
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