Russia’s military spies plotted to place bombs on cargo planes flying to the U.S. and Canada

 

Russia’s military spies  plotted to place bombs on cargo planes flying to the U.S. and Canada

Russia’s military spies were behind a plot to place bombs on cargo planes flying to the U.S. and Canada this summer, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday, citing European security officials.

 The incendiary devices were mailed in July via a DHL facility in Lithuania, and eventually caught fire at a different facility in Leipzig, Germany, as well as in Birmingham, England, triggering a multinational investigation. The BBC reports a third fire ignited at a transport company in Jablonow, Poland, near Warsaw; that incident took two hours to extinguish.

  The fires began in electric massage machines containing a magnesium-based substance. “Magnesium-based fires are hard to put out, especially on board a plane,” the BBC reports.

 The efforts appear to have been a “test run,” Polish officials allege. What’s more, “An aircraft far from land and over an ocean would have been at risk of going down,” German authorities said, according to the Journal.

 The latest: “Polish authorities have arrested four people and are searching for two more in connection with the case,” NBC News reports