Drone with an explosive device found beside a Ukrainian An-124 at Leipzig/Halle Airport, DHL freighter struck in flight

Shortly before midnight on 4 August 2026, at about 23:40, a drone was found on the apron near the southern runway at Leipzig/Halle Airport, beside a parked Ukrainian Antonov An-124 heavy cargo aircraft. An X-ray examination showed explosives and a detonator attached to it.

The Saxon State Criminal Police Office described the find as a drone carrying an unknown explosive device. Police spokesperson Olaf Hoppe said federal police examined the object found near the southern runway, and it was rendered safe in a controlled explosion. German reporting indicates that the detonator was defective.

Flight operations were suspended shortly after midnight. A DHL cargo aircraft that had to abort its landing because of the closure struck an unidentified object while climbing away, about six kilometres from the airport at roughly 400 metres altitude, according to ZDFheute and Euronews. It landed safely at Hanover, where minor damage to the nose section was found. Bild reported that the airport counter-drone system had detected two drones that night.

One passenger flight and several cargo flights were diverted and the northern runway reopened at about 01:55. The investigation is led by the counter-extremism and counter-terrorism units of the Saxon state criminal police together with the Bundespolizei. As ESUT noted, Leipzig/Halle hosts NATO's SALIS strategic airlift arrangement and is Antonov Airlines' main base outside Ukraine.

The explosive device is now on the record from the Saxon state criminal police rather than from anonymous sources, which removes the main uncertainty of the first reports. What stays open is attribution and the link between the two events. No suspect has been named, no claim of responsibility exists and no authority has confirmed that the object struck by the DHL aircraft was the second drone. Investigators have not ruled out a political motive. If the connection holds, one night combined a device placed against a Ukrainian heavy-lift aircraft on the ground with an airborne object on a flight path, at a hub central to NATO strategic airlift.