Czech authorities have launched a probe into a fire that broke out at a warehouse of a company that makes drones and other military equipment, including a new cruise missile it was reportedly planning to test in combat in Ukraine this year.
Officials say the predawn fire at a facility owned by arms producer LPP Holding in the city of Pardubice, some 100 kilometers east of Prague, was deliberately set, and are treating it as a terror attack.
A group calling itself Earthquake Faction said on Telegram that it was responsible for the fire at the facility, which it called a "key production center" for Israeli weapons and linked to what it said was “genocide against Palestine, Iran, and Lebanon.”
However, Czech news outlet Seznam Zpravy cited unnamed sources as saying security officials are also considering the possibility that it was a “false flag” operation and that the Earthquake Faction, which the outlet said has “no traceable history,” is a cover for another entity or a state actor.
"We are dealing with all available information. There is a probable connection with a terrorist attack," Interior Minister Lubomir Metnar said in a post on X.
Prime Minister Andrej Babis also said on X that it was being investigated as an act of terrorism, and President Petr Pavel said it was important to wait for the results of the investigation.
Czech national police chief Martin Vondrasek said that not long after the fire was reported at about 4 a.m., messages were sent to several Czech journalists from an address registered in the same domain as the site of Earthquake Faction.
In a statement on its website, LPP confirmed that a fire had broken out at one of its facilities and said it would not speculate about “the causes or circumstances.” It said nobody was injured.
Czech media outlet Aktualne quoted an LPP representative as saying that cooperation that had been planned in 2023 with an Israeli firm, Elbit Systems, never took place because a tender was canceled, and that LPP has never produced Israeli drones.
Articles on the LPP website indicate the company has made drones that have been used by the Ukrainian military in its defense against the full-scale Russian invasion, now in its fifth year.
In December, Aktualne reported that combat testing of a new cruise missile made by LPP with a range of up to 680 km, the Narwhal, was to take place in Ukraine in January-February of this year, with serial production potentially starting soon afterward.
A call placed to LPP after regular business hours went unanswered.