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Czech State Security Council convenes over suspected terrorist attack — portal

According to Czech Interior Minister Lubomir Metnar, the fire at a plant in the city of Pardubice, where drone production was planned, is being investigated as a possible terrorist attack

PRAGUE, March 20. /TASS/. Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis convened a meeting of the State Security Council on Friday evening in connection with a suspected terrorist attack in the republic, the news portal Idnes reported.

According to Czech Interior Minister Lubomir Metnar, the fire at a plant in the city of Pardubice (Eastern Czechia), where drone production was planned, is being investigated as a possible terrorist attack.

Czech media clarified that a technical facility caught fire in the industrial zone in the morning. The fire subsequently spread to an adjacent administrative building. Firefighters extinguished the blaze by 8:00 a.m. local time [7:00 a.m. GMT]. No one was injured, but the technical facility was almost completely destroyed. The amount of damage caused has not yet been determined.

The industrial zone houses, among other tenants, the Czech arms company LPP Holding, which several years ago announced that it planned to develop and produce drones in Pardubice in cooperation with the Israeli firm Elbit Systems.

A few hours later, the pro-Palestinian group The Earthquake Faction claimed responsibility for the incident. "On March 20th 2026, we struck the epicenter of the Israeli weapons industry in Europe. <...> Every weapon developed by Elbit Systems is first 'tested' on Palestinians, before being sold on to international governments, expanding the empire built off the destruction of Palestine," the group said in a statement on its website.

The Earthquake Faction positions itself as "an internationalist underground network that targets key sites critical to the Zionist entity." Its goal is "to destroy all limbs of the empire from within, by any means effective."

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