UPDATED: Poland resumes ground search after Friday airspace breach
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WARSAW, Dec 30 (Reuters) – Poland was renewing a search operation for elements of a suspected Russian rocket on Saturday, which it said had violated the country’s airspace on Friday morning, the Polish army said.
“We inform that on December 30…a ground search will be carried out in the Lublin Voivodeship for possible elements of the object that violated Polish airspace yesterday,” the Polish army’s operational command wrote on social media platform X.
“The aim of the search is to definitively confirm that no element of the object remains on Polish territory.”
Polish military officials said on Friday that the object had left the country’s airspace within three minutes of entry from the direction of its border with Ukraine.
“The Ukrainian side and allies have initially confirmed our radar records that the object had left Polish territory,” a spokesperson for the operational command told Reuters.
The search was scheduled to run until 1900 GMT after being paused overnight, he added.
Some 480 soldiers of the Territorial Defense Force were to take part in the search near the city of Zamosc in southeastern Poland, the operational command said on X.
On Friday evening Poland’s foreign ministry summoned the Russian charge d’affaires, demanding an explanation for the violation of its airspace by a guided missile.
Informujemy, że w piątek o godz. 7.12 czasu lokalnego, od strony granicy z Ukrainą, doszło do naruszenia polskiej przestrzeni powietrznej przez obiekt, który po niecałych trzech minutach opuścił terytorium Polski. Identyfikujemy go jako rosyjską rakietę manewrującą.
