By Karin Strohecker and Jörn Poltz
MUNICH (Reuters) -Drones have been spotted at airports and military installations across Germany over the past two days, Bild newspaper quoted a confidential police report as saying, suggesting sightings this week at Munich Airport were the tip of the iceberg.
Dozens of flights were diverted or cancelled at Munich Airport on Friday after both runways were closed following the second drone sighting in two days. Operations resumed, with delays, on Saturday morning.
There is mounting concern that Russia could be behind a growing number of recent drone incursions in the airspace of Ukraine’s European allies, but the Kremlin has denied any involvement.
DRONES SPOTTED AT MUNICH AIRPORT ARE ‘USED MILITARILY’
Quoting the confidential police report which it said it had seen, Bild said on its website the drones spotted at Munich Airport were “used militarily”, without giving further details or saying where they had come from.
Other sightings in the past three days, it said, included a small aircraft reported flying over an ammunition depot in northern Germany on Friday afternoon.
Three drones were also seen the day before, seemingly flying in formation, above a base of the Federal Police’s airborne unit near the northern town of Gifhorn, it said.
Police later said that a drone spotted on Friday morning flying 700 metres (0.4 miles) from Frankfurt Airport, Germany’s largest hub, had been piloted by a man who was overly eager to test a new hobby drone.
“He faces a heavy fine,” the Frankfurt police wrote.
MINISTER SAYS ‘WE ARE IN AN ARMS RACE’
The German defence ministry confirmed a media report that drones had been spotted flying over Erding military base near Munich Airport at around the time of the airport’s first closure on Thursday evening.
The Erding base is home to some of the German armed forces’ drone research and development.
Police have disclosed no details about the nature or origin of the drones. Those sightings left about 11,500 passengers stranded over two evenings and caused dozens of flights to be cancelled, diverted or postponed.
German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt, hosting a migration-focussed summit of European interior ministers in Munich on Saturday, told reporters he would equip police with a drone defence unit.
“We are in an arms race,” he said. “We want to rise to that challenge.”
European aviation has repeatedly been thrown into chaos in recent weeks by drone sightings and air incursions.
Dobrindt has promised legislation making it easier for the police to ask the military to shoot drones down.
(Reporting by Karin Strohecker and Mrinmay Dey, additional reporting by Kirsti Knolle; Writing by Thomas Escritt; Editing by Chris Reese, Rosalba O’Brien, William Mallard and Timothy Heritage)
