- Author, Sofia Ferreira Santos – Konol Khalilova
- Role, BBC News
Local officials said that 38 people were killed, while dozens of others survived, in the crash of a passenger plane carrying 67 people in Kazakhstan.
The plane was en route to Grozny, Russia, but was diverted due to fog, the airline told the BBC.
Moscow said on Thursday that it would not “put forward hypotheses” about the cause of the accident until the investigation is completed.
Flight No. J2-8243 of Azerbaijan Airlines caught fire while trying to make an emergency landing near the Kazakh city of Aktau.
Video footage showed the plane heading towards the ground at high speed, with the landing gear lowered, before it caught fire as it landed.
The airline said the plane made an “emergency landing” about three kilometers from Aktau.
Data from the flight tracking website Flightradar24 showed that the plane took off from the Azerbaijani capital, Baku, at 03:55 GMT on Wednesday, and crashed at approximately 06:28 on the same day.
Unconfirmed reports from Russian media said the plane may have collided with a flock of birds before crashing.
Azerbaijan’s prosecutor general said “all possible scenarios” were being examined, and President Ilham Aliyev said it was too early to say anything definitive.
Air defense experts noted that the pattern of damage, both inside and outside the aircraft, indicated that active Russian air defense in Grozny may have caused the accident.
“If you look at the pattern of fragments that we see, it looks like an air defense missile exploding at the back and left of the plane,” Justin Crump, of risk consultancy Sibylline, told the BBC.
Azerbaijan Airlines said flights between Baku and the Russian cities of Grozny and Makhachkala would be cancelled, pending an investigation into the incident.
Officials said the plane’s flight data recorder had been recovered.
Most of the plane’s passengers were citizens of Azerbaijan, but there were also some passengers from Russia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.
Among those killed in the accident was a woman who was traveling for the holiday with her children in Chechnya, whose capital is Grozny. One mother, who was traveling to undergo medical examinations for her sick child, is still missing.
A young woman spoke to the BBC Azerbaijan Service about her attempt to find out the fate of her father, who was on the flight.
She explained that her father was traveling with his son, who survived the accident. The son was able to contact his sister, but there has been no news about their father yet.
Undocumented video footage showed survivors crawling out of the rubble, some with visible injuries.
Both Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan began investigations into the incident. Embraer told the BBC that it “stands ready to assist all relevant authorities.”
The BBC has contacted Azerbaijan Airlines for comment.
Embraer, a Brazilian manufacturer, is a smaller competitor to Boeing and Airbus, and has a strong safety record.
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