WARSAW, July 30 (Reuters) – Polish police found a crater and scattered debris in a field left by an unidentified object that disappeared from army radars tracking it in domestic airspace during Russian strikes on Ukraine, authorities said on Thursday.
Poland scrambled fighter jets to secure its airspace after Russian air strikes killed at least 13 people in neighbouring Ukraine, including one in Kyiv, the capital, in attacks that spread as far as the western city of Lviv.
“An unidentified object moving westward was detected in Polish airspace,” the operational command of the armed forces said on X, adding that it disappeared from radars soon after the sighting at 3:40 a.m.
A Mi-24 helicopter that went to the object’s last location to verify and confirm the radar data pinpointed the likely crash site, it added.
“A helicopter crew located the probable crash site of the object in an undeveloped area near the village of Tarnawa-Kolonia in the Lublin province.”
The crater left was about 10 m (33 ft) wide, the interior ministry added on X. According to local authorities, it was located in farmland about 2 km from residential buildings.
Police in the Lublin region said they received a report of a loud bang in Biłgoraj county, between the villages of Tarnawa Kolonia and Biskupice.
“Officers discovered a crater and scattered debris from an unidentified object in a field located about 2 km (1.2 miles) from the nearest buildings, between the villages,” the police added on X.
Sirens sounded in Lublin for a few minutes to warn against possible Russian strikes, media said.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk was travelling to the scene, and he announced that he has established a special coordination team.
“An investigation is currently underway to determine what type of object fell near Tarnawa-Kolonia,” Defence Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz wrote on X.
(Reporting by Alan Charlish, Pawel Florkiewicz and Anna Koper; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Hugh Lawson)
