A army drone that reputedly flew all of the manner from the Ukrainian strugglefare region over 3 European NATO-member states earlier than crashing in an city region of the Croatian capital turned into armed with an explosive device, Croatia’s protection minister stated Sunday.
The Soviet-made plane crossed Romania and Hungary earlier than coming into Croatia, slamming right into a subject close to a scholar dormitory overdue Thursday. About forty parked vehicles have been broken withinside the huge explosion, however no person turned into injured.
“Traces of explosives and clues suggesting that this turned into now no longer a reconnaissance plane have been observed. We observed components of an air bomb,” Croatian Defense Minister Mario Banozic stated on the crash site.
He stated that this in addition increases a query approximately whether or not the drone belonged to Russia or Ukraine.
“There are factors that indicated it may have come from each,” he stated.
Air crash investigators have pulled maximum of the drone’s last components from a huge crater it created on impact, inclusive of a partially broken black container that ought to display the drone’s flight path.
Croatian officers have criticized NATO for what they known as a gradual response to a completely extreme incident and known as into query the readiness of the army alliance’s member states to reply to a likely attack.
NATO stated the alliance’s incorporated air and missile protection had tracked the object’s flight path. But Croatian officers stated the country’s government were not knowledgeable and that NATO reacted most effective after questions have been posed via way of means of journalists.
“If this case were detected and resolved in time in neighboring international locations, we’d now no longer be right here today,” Banozic stated.
“We will are looking for solutions to what happened. The protection ministers of Romania and Hungary stated that day they have been comparing what happened. We are looking ahead to an answer,” he stated.
Croatian investigators recognized the unmanned plane that crashed in Zagreb as a Soviet-generation Tu-141 that turned into used for reconnaissance missions in each international locations withinside the 1980s.
