Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Tuesday that people and groups behind hybrid attacks against Germany, such as an explosive drone found at an airport, will “pay for them,” without naming an alleged perpetrator. Germany had “increasingly found itself in the crosshairs of hybrid attackers,” Merz said, referring to an incident at Leipzig airport where police disabled a drone found near a Ukrainian cargo plane. Those comments come on the same day that investigators found a third drone and what they suspected were explosives believed to be linked to an attempted attack on Leipzig/Halle airport earlier this month, public broadcasters NDR and WDR and the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper reported Tuesday. The drone was discovered west of the airport on August 14, 10 days after the initial attempted attack. According to local media, investigators also discovered around 50 grams of what they suspect is military explosive hexogen. Other clues led investigators to Kursdorf, north of the airport. There, agents found a device that could have been used to control a drone. According to current findings, an antenna and electronic components had been taped to a tree. In the vicinity, emergency services also found scorched earth and metal fragments. Investigators are examining whether this could be a possible explosion site. The attempted attack German police deployed a bomb-disposal robot during the night of August 5 after a drone was found on the runway near a Ukrainian cargo plane, causing alarm and forcing numerous flights to be diverted. A plane that had to abort its scheduled landing at Leipzig-Halle airport collided in midair with a nearby unknown object, but then landed safely elsewhere, the government said. It was later confirmed that a drone equipped with explosives and a detonator had been found near a plane belonging to Ukrainian cargo carrier Antonov Airlines, a NATO spokesman said on Wednesday. According to the Kyiv Independent news site, the suspected object was destroyed in a controlled explosion. Police spokesman Olaf Hoppe told Euronews that at the same time as the sighting, an object was found in the area of the south runway which federal police examined. He declined to confirm that a drone had been sighted. X-ray analysis revealed that it was a drone. The airport in eastern Germany plays a key role in the transportation of military goods, including by the German military and NATO allies, and also serves as a base for Ukrainian airline Antonov. Video footage from a local news agency showed the bomb disposal robot near an Antonov plane painted in the Ukrainian colors of yellow and blue and with the words “Be brave like Kherson” written on the side, a reference to a Ukrainian region hit by Russian attacks. Bild newspaper reported that the plane that collided in mid-air with an unknown object was a DHL cargo plane that was hit about six kilometers away, suffering minor damage to the nose that was discovered when it later landed safely at Hannover airport. German police first reported Wednesday morning that a “security-related incident” had temporarily halted flights to the airport. “Shortly before midnight, an unidentified flying object was sighted near Leipzig-Halle Airport, which led to the diversion of several aircraft, including a passenger plane, to other airports,” they said. A passenger plane from Mallorca and several cargo planes heading there had to be sent to other locations. Series of drone sightings Germany and other European countries have repeatedly observed drones flying over sensitive sites such as airports, military bases and industrial plants. Authorities in Germany, one of Ukraine’s biggest military supporters, have said they suspect Russia orchestrated many of the incidents as part of a campaign of sabotage, espionage and disinformation. In July 2024, a package burst into flames on the ground at Leipzig airport before it could be loaded onto a DHL cargo plane, part of what security services treated as an alleged arson sabotage plot linked to Moscow. Russia has denied being behind such incidents. Last year, a Chinese national was convicted of passing information about flight schedules and cargo movements at Leipzig-Halle airport to a man spying for Beijing. In October last year, local media reported that a laser facility had been deployed near Munich airport to protect the facility from drone sightings. This came after the airport was closed for two consecutive days due to suspicious drone sightings. In November, flight operations at Berlin’s Brandenburg Airport were disrupted for around two hours due to the sighting of a drone in its airspace. Incidents of unidentified drones flying in Germany’s airspace are increasing and the country’s air navigation service, DFS, says 144 drone overflights were recorded last year, with 35 incidents clustered around Frankfurt airport.
