Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš wrote in Network X on 20 March that a fire at an industrial workshop in the town of Pardubice, 100 kilometres east of Prague, was being investigated as a terrorist attack.
Czech Interior Minister Lubomir Metnar made a similar statement. On his initiative, a crisis headquarters has been organised.
Czech President Petr Pavel wrote in X that he is “following” the events in Pardubice.
The fire burnt down one of the workshops of LPP Holding, a company that manufactures unmanned systems, including those supplied to Ukraine. The fire also occurred in its office. In December 2025, the company showed a Narwhal cruise missile with a range of more than 600 kilometres, which was planned to be handed over to the AFU.
A previously unknown “earthquake faction” claimed responsibility for the attack. The group links its actions to protest against the production of weapons for Israel at the Pardubice facility and “genocide against Palestine, Iran and Lebanon”. It registered an Internet site the day before the arson attack and a Telegram channel after the incident. It published a video of two people setting fire to a hangar containing the company’s workshops. LPP Holdings representatives said the company wanted to participate in a tender announced by Israel’s Elbit in 2023, but it was cancelled.
LPP Holding confirmed that “a fire occurred at one of its facilities” and declined to “speculate about the causes or circumstances of the incident”.
Czech police chief Martin Vondrášek said the fire was reported shortly after 4am. The report of the incident was then sent to journalists from several Czech media outlets from an email account registered on the same domain as the France website. According to Vondrášek, pyrotechnical expertise, among other things, is being conducted as part of the investigation.