An Azerbaijani airliner carrying 62 passengers and five crew crashed near the Kazakh city of Aktau on Wednesday, likely killing more than 30 people, officials said.
The plane was en route from the Azerbaijani capital Baku to the Russian city of Grozny in the North Caucasus.
Kazakhstan’s Emergencies Ministry said in a Telegram statement that there were five crew members on board. A total of 29 survivors, including two children, were hospitalized, the ministry told Russian state news agency RIA Novosti.
Russian news agency Interfax quoted medical personnel as saying four bodies had been recovered, and rescue workers at the scene said both pilots had died in the crash, according to a preliminary assessment.
Azerbaijan Airlines previously announced that the Embraer 190 aircraft made an emergency landing three kilometers from the city.
The ministry initially said 25 people survived the crash, but later revised that number to 29 as the search and rescue operation continued at the crash site, reducing the alleged death toll.
The Prosecutor General’s Office in Azerbaijan later reported that at least 32 people had survived, but the number was not final. The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry said in a statement that some of them were in critical condition.
The number of survivors could mean that more than 30 people died.
According to Azerbaijan Airlines, there were 42 Azerbaijani citizens, 16 Russian citizens, six Kazakh and three Kyrgyz citizens on board.
The airline is suspending all flights from Baku to Russia’s Chechnya region until the investigation into the fatal crash is completed, Russian state news agency TASS quoted the company as saying on Wednesday.
Bird strike, GPS jamming
RIA Novosti quoted Russia’s civil aviation agency Rosaviatsia as saying preliminary information showed the pilot decided to divert to Aktau after a bird strike on the plane led to “an emergency situation on board.”
Cell phone footage shared online appeared to show the plane making a steep descent before hitting the ground in a fireball. Other footage showed part of the fuselage being torn away from the wings and the rest of the plane lying upside down in the grass. The footage matched the aircraft’s colors and its registration number.
Some of the videos posted on social media showed survivors dragging fellow passengers away from the wreckage of the plane.
Flight tracking data from FlightRadar24.com showed that as the plane approached the airport in Aktau, it appeared to make a right turn and its altitude fluctuated significantly up and down in the final minutes of the flight before hitting the ground.
FlightRadar24 said separately in an online post that the plane experienced “severe GPS interference” that “caused the aircraft to transmit poor ADS-B data,” referring to the information it provided flight tracking Websites allow you to track aircraft in flight.
Russia has been accused in the past of jamming GPS transmissions across the region.
Azerbaijan Airlines said in a statement that it would keep the public informed and changed its social media banners to solid black.
Azerbaijan’s state news agency Azertac said an official delegation consisting of Azerbaijan’s Minister of Emergency Situations, the country’s deputy prosecutor general and the vice president of Azerbaijan Airlines had been sent to Aktau to conduct an “on-site investigation.”
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, who had traveled to St. Petersburg in Russia, returned to Azerbaijan when he learned of the crash, the presidential press service said. Aliyev was scheduled to attend an informal meeting of leaders of the Commonwealth of Independent States, a bloc of former Soviet states formed after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Aliyev expressed his condolences to the victims’ families in a statement on social media. “It is with deep sadness that I express my condolences to the families of the victims and wish those injured a speedy recovery,” he wrote.
He also signed a decree declaring December 26 a day of mourning in Azerbaijan.
Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke to Aliyev by phone and expressed his condolences, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
At the CIS meeting in St. Petersburg, Putin also said that the Russian Emergencies Ministry had sent a plane with equipment and medical personnel to Kazakhstan to help with the aftermath of the crash.
Both Kazakh and Azerbaijani authorities were investigating the crash. Embraer told The Associated Press in a statement that the company “stands ready to assist all relevant authorities.”
