Azerbaijan observed a day of national mourning on Thursday after an Azerbaijan Airlines passenger plane crashed in western Kazakhstan the day before with 67 people on board, 38 of whom died.
According to the airline, the Embraer 190 with 62 passengers and five crew members on board was operating a flight from Baku, the Azerbaijani capital, to Grozny, the capital of the Russian Caucasian republic of Chechnya. It crashed near the Caspian Sea port of Aktau and caught fire.
An investigation is underway, according to Astana, but some military and aviation experts have already said that the plane, which was flying over an area of the Russian Caucasus where a drone attack has been reported, could have been accidentally shot down by a Russian air defense system.
Kazakh authorities immediately denounced “speculations” surrounding the accident, while no official hypothesis on the origins of the crash was put forward Thursday morning.
“We must wait until the end of the investigation”, stressed Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
The chairman of the Kazakh Senate, the upper house of the Kazakhstani parliament, Maulen Ashimbayev, assured that it was “not possible” to say for the time being what led to this catastrophe.
“Real experts are dealing with it and they will make their conclusions. Neither Kazakhstan, nor Russia, nor Azerbaijan have an interest in hiding information,” he said, quoted by the Russian official agency TASS.
Specialists from the Kazakh Ministry of Transport, as well as a delegation The investigation is being conducted by representatives of the Azerbaijan Civil Aviation Agency and Azerbaijan Airlines.
Officials from Embraer and Brazil’s Center for the Investigation and Prevention of Aircraft Accidents (CENIPA) are also expected in Kazakhstan, according to Kazakh authorities.
A Russian blogger and military expert Yuri Podoliaka, for his part, assured on Telegram that holes visible on the plane’s fuselage were similar to those that could be caused by “an anti-aircraft missile system.”
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Azerbaijan Airlines initially claimed that the plane had hit a flock of birds, before withdrawing this information.
For its part, the regional department of the Kazakh Ministry of Health reported, in a press release, a “explosion of a balloon” on board the aircraft, without giving further details.
According to the Kazakh Ministry of Emergency Situations, 38 people were killed in the crash, and “29 survivors, including three children, were hospitalized.”
According to the Azerbaijani news agency Azertac, 12 of the survivors are due to return to Azerbaijan on Thursday. A day of national mourning was declared in Azerbaijan on Thursday by President Ilham Aliyev, who interrupted his visit to Russia on Wednesday, where he was due to attend an informal summit of leaders of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) with Vladimir Putin.
M. Aliyev ordered “urgent measures to investigate the causes of the disaster,” according to the presidential press service.
According to the Flightradar24 service, which tracks aircraft movements in real time, the plane crossed the Caspian Sea, deviating from its normal route, before circling above the area where it crashed.
The Kazakh Interior Ministry announced that it was investigating the crash for “violation of safety and air transport operating rules.”
“Covered in Blood”
A Kazakh resident, Elmira, told the local branch of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) that she was near the crash site and, along with others, ran to the scene to help survivors.
“The front of the plane was on fire. We rescued the survivors. Their bodies were covered in blood. They were crying. Everyone was asking for help,” did she relateé. “A little girl came out. She looked at me and said, 'Save my mother, my mother is still here.' She was crying and begging, 'Save her, save her.'”
“When the plane crashed, my wife was sitting next to me. I haven't seen her since the crash and I don't know where she is,” another survivor said
There were 37 Azerbaijani citizens, six Kazakh citizens, three Kyrgyz citizens and 16 Russian citizens on board the plane, according to the Kazakh Ministry of Transport.
An Ilyushin-76 plane took off from Aktau to Moscow on Thursday with 9 injured Russian nationals on board, including a child, according to the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations.