Crisis committee meeting after fire claimed by purported anti-Israel group

The Czech minister of the interior, Lubomír Metnar, called a meeting of the government’s crisis committee after responsibility for a fire at a factory in Pardubice in the early hours of Friday was claimed by somebody purporting to be an anti-Israel underground group.

The alleged group sent an email to a Czech media outlet saying that “the Earthquake Faction” had started the blaze at what they called a “production centre for Israeli weapons”, due to the operator’s “role in the Israeli genocide in Gaza”.

The factory is owned by Czech arms maker LPP Holding. It said some years ago that it planned to produce and develop drones in Pardubice in cooperation with an Israeli company named Elbit Systems.

The fire service reported that there were no injuries.