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Molotov cocktail attack on Lithuanian embassy in Minsk

Two unknown persons threw two bottles containing a flammable substance into the Lithuanian embassy compound in Minsk on Tuesday night, BelaPAN

As Ambassador Linas Linkevicius told reporters, the incident occurred at about 10:45 p.m., when he was staying in the embassy building. The bottles burst into a fire, but it was promptly put out by Lithuanian police officers. No one was hurt and no damage was caused because the bottles landed on pavement tiles.

Mr. Linkevicius said that he could only guess the motive for the attack.

The Lithuanian foreign ministry announced on Wednesday that the Belarusian ambassador in Vilnius would be summoned to the ministry later in the day and handed a note of protest in connection with the incident.

Edminas Bagdonas, director of the Lithuanian foreign ministry’s Department for Eastern Neighborhood Policy who served as ambassador to Belarus between February 2007 and July 2012, said Wednesday at a meeting of the Lithuanian parliament’s foreign affairs committee that the incident was not the first of its kind. In previous incidents, the embassy building was splashed with paint and a dummy bomb was discovered in the compound.

According to a spokesman for the Investigative Committee of Belarus, the Committee’s office for the Partyzanski district of Minsk instituted criminal proceedings in connection with the Molotov cocktail attack on the Lithuanian embassy. The spokesman said that the embassy had a video of the attack, which would be made available to Belarusian investigators.