Police said they received a report of a loud explosion early Thursday near the village of Tarnawa-Kolonia, about 75 kilometers from the border with Ukraine, TVP World reports.
Officers sent to the scene found "a crater in a field around 2 kilometers from the nearest buildings, along with scattered fragments of an unidentified object," police from nearby Lublin said in a statement. The cause of the explosion, which left a crater about 10 meters wide, remains unclear.
Polish Defense Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz said it had been “an extremely difficult night” for the country's air defenses and threat detection systems, adding that authorities were “currently working to determine what type of object fell near the village of Tarnawa-Kolonia.”
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that “there was a violation of Polish airspace” during Russia's large-scale missile attack on western Ukraine. A government spokesman said that the prime minister is on his way to the site of the incident. Overnight, Poland activated its air force to protect its airspace as Russia launched a large-scale missile and drone attack targeting western Ukraine. Poland's Operational Command said an unidentified object was detected in Polish airspace at about 3:40 a.m. local time, moving westward.
The object later disappeared from radar, prompting the military to dispatch a helicopter to its last known location. “The helicopter crew identified what is believed to be the object's impact site in an uninhabited area near Tarnawa-Kolonia” it added. Security and investigative operations remain underway at the scene, and authorities have not yet identified the debris.
Local residents said the bang was unlike anything they had experienced before. "We've lived here all our lives and have never heard anything like it. The windows were almost blown out," one resident told local outlet Lublin 112. "What was it, a drone or a bomb? People are saying it was some kind of missile," another added.
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