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A cargo plane of package delivery company DHL sits on the tarmac of Leipzig/Halle Airport on October 15, 2024 in Schkeuditz, Germany. Investigators suspect Russian sabotage behind package fire at DHL airport hub

Western security officials He reportedly said Russia was plotting to plant explosives on commercial or passenger planes bound for the US and Canada.

Two incendiary devices were shipped using German logistics company DHL and ignited at DHL logistics centers in Leipzig, Germany, and Birmingham, England, in July, triggering a multinational investigation, according to Wall Street Journal.

Security officials and sources familiar with the investigation told the Journal that intelligence agencies in Europe had determined that the explosions were caused by electric massagers implanted with a flammable magnesium-based substance.

Those officials say the electric massagers, sent to Britain from Lithuania, were designed as a “test” of a wider Russian sabotage plot to assess how best to get explosives on board aircraft bound for North america.

National Prosecutor’s Office of Poland announced that four suspects had been arrested in connection with the DHL hub fires and are being charged with “sabotage or terrorist operations on behalf of a foreign intelligence agency,” the Journal reported.

“The aim of the group was also to test the transfer channel for such packages, which would eventually be sent to the United States of America and Canada,” the prosecutor’s office said, without disclosing the names or nationalities of the suspects.

The head of Poland’s foreign intelligence agency, Pawel Szota, told the Journal that Russian spies were responsible and that updating any such attack would be seen as a “major escalation” of Russia’s sabotage campaign against Western powers.

“I’m not sure that Russia’s political leaders are aware of the consequences if one of these packages were to explode, causing a mass casualty event,” Szota told the Journal.

The newspaper said Szota’s comments and those of Western intelligence officials supported the claim that Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, was behind the plot.

“We have never heard official allegations” of Russian involvement, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the Journal when asked for comment. “These are traditional unsubstantiated media insinuations.”

UK counter-terrorism police are investigating the Birmingham fire and working with other agencies across Europe. German police reportedly tested replicas of the incendiary devices and said fire suppression systems on most planes would have difficulty extinguishing the magnesium if it ignited on board.

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Sources familiar with German investigation said pilots would have to make an emergency landing in that scenario or the plane could fall over water if an immediate landing is not possible.

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