Denmark airport closed again due to drone alert

(AFP) A new Danish airport had to close early Friday morning after a second drone alert in two nights and after the prime minister blamed similar incidents this week on "hybrid attacks."

Airspace over the Aalborg terminal in northern Denmark was closed from late Thursday due to an alert for such devices, before reopening at around 12:35 a.m. Friday, police said.

The closure forced a KLM flight from Amsterdam to turn around and the cancellation of a Scandinavian Airlines trip from the Danish capital Copenhagen, according to air tracking sites and airline websites.

However, authorities have not formally confirmed the presence of drones.

Already, such devices had been spotted Wednesday and Thursday at airports in Aalborg, Esbjerg, Sonderborg and at Skrydstrup air base, before they took off on their own, police warned at the time.

That incident prompted an initial shutdown in Aalborg for several hours. The drone sighting also generated the closure of the airport in the capital, Copenhagen, earlier this week.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said in a video message Thursday that the country had been "the victim of hybrid attacks," a reference to a form of unconventional warfare.

The Defense Ministry claimed it is a "systematic" operation caused by a "professional actor," without specifying who.

The incidents also follow the incursion of Russian drones in Poland and Romania and of Russian fighter jets in Estonian airspace, although Danish and European authorities have not established any link between these incidents for the time being.

Frederiksen stated, however, that Russia was "the main country posing a threat to Europe's security."

Moscow "firmly" denied being involved in what happened, and its embassy in Copenhagen claimed this was "orchestrated provocation."

Last weekend, other European airports, notably those in Brussels, London, Berlin and Dublin, were affected by a cyberattack whose origin has not been disclosed.