By Maria Gordeyeva
ASTANA (Reuters) – An Embraer passenger plane flying from Azerbaijan to Russia crashed near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan on Wednesday with 67 passengers and five crew on board, Kazakh authorities said, saying 12 people survived .
Unconfirmed video of the crash showed the Azerbaijan Airlines plane bursting into flames and billowing thick black smoke as it hit the ground.
The Central Asian country’s disaster management ministry said in a statement that firefighters had extinguished the fire and that survivors were being treated at a nearby hospital.
Azerbaijan Airlines said the Embraer 190 plane, flight number J2-8243, was flying from Baku to Grozny, the capital of Russia’s Chechnya, but was forced to make an emergency landing about 3 km (1.8 miles) from the Kazakh city of Aktau .
Russian news agencies said the plane was diverted due to fog in Grozny.
Authorities in Kazakhstan said they had begun investigating various possible versions of the incident, including a technical problem, Russian news agency Interfax reported.
