- An explosion at a Rheinmetall munitions factory in Spain injured six workers, local emergency services said.
- The German arms manufacturer told BI that the company saw no indication of an attack.
- Russia is suspected of being behind a plot to assassinate the CEO of Rheinmetall.
An explosion at a Rheinmetall munitions factory in Spain injured six workers on Thursday, local emergency services have said.
One person was left with serious injuries following the incident, which occurred in the southeastern Spanish city of Murcia.
Oliver Hoffmann, a spokesperson for the German arms manufacturer, told Business Insider that the cause of the explosion was still under investigation but that the company saw no indication of an attack.
Hoffmann said the site’s production facilities were not damaged in the incident.
According to Spain’s state register of emissions and pollutant sources, the depot’s main activity is the manufacturing of explosives.
Rheinmetall has been a key military aid provider to Ukraine, supplying Kyiv with artillery ammunition, combat vehicles, tanks, and more.
Rheinmetall vehicles delivered to Ukraine include the Leopard 1 and Leopard 2 main battle tanks, the Marder and Lynx infantry fighting vehicles, and the Gepard antiaircraft tank.
The company has also helped train Ukrainian specialists in maintenance and repair tasks.
In February, Rheinmetall said it aimed to produce up to 700,000 rounds of artillery ammunition a year by 2025 at its plants in Germany, Spain, South Africa, Australia, and Hungary.
Armin Papperger, Rheinmetall's CEO, said in a March interview with the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung that the company planned to increase production capacity to 1.1 million rounds a year by 2027.
In 2024, US intelligence reportedly helped thwart a Russian plot to kill Papperger.
James Appathurai, NATO's Deputy Assistant Secretary General for Innovation, Hybrid, and Cyber, confirmed the plot at a European Parliament committee meeting earlier this week.
"What we have seen over a period of the last couple of years in particular, is incidents of sabotage taking place across NATO countries, by which I mean derailment of trains, acts of arson, attacks on politicians' property, threats to…plots to assassinate industry leaders, like publicly the head of Rheinmetall," he said.
The German newspaper Der Spiegel previously reported the Russian scheme had been spurred on by Rheinmetall's plan to establish a tank factory in Ukraine as part of a push to bolster the country's arms industry.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov rejected the reports at the time.
Russia is believed to have been behind dozens of hybrid attacks on NATO members in recent years, including a number of incidents targeting the air freight industry.