Bird flock, not drone, triggered Vilnius air alert and NATO jet scramble
Lithuania briefly shut Vilnius airport and called in a NATO jet after a suspected drone sighting that turned out to be a flock of birds.
Lithuanian authorities briefly closed Vilnius airport and called in a NATO fighter jet on Sunday after what appeared to be a drone in the country's airspace, only for the contact to be identified as a flock of birds.
The National Crisis Management Centre said the air alert was lifted and the airport reopened within 38 minutes, after the NATO jet carried out a visual identification of the object.
"On initial radar readings, marks left by birds and drones can be similar," the centre said in a statement.
The fighter was scrambled from Siauliai in northern Lithuania, where the Italian air force is currently stationed as part of NATO's Baltic Air Defence mission.
The Vilnius marathon, being run in the capital at the time, was not interrupted, organisers said.
The incident comes amid rising concern in the Baltic region over military drones entering the airspace of Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, feeding worries that the war in Ukraine is spilling across NATO's northern borders with Russia.