The Russian government has warned against spreading “hypotheses” about the cause of the crash of a Russia-bound passenger plane that killed 38 people in Kazakhstan on Wednesday.
Footage of the destroyed fuselage appeared to indicate shrapnel damage, and some aviation experts suggested that the Azerbaijan Airlines plane may have been hit by air defense systems over Russia’s Chechen Republic.
Before the plane crashed near the Kazakh city of Aktau, it was diverted from its destination in Chechnya to western Kazakhstan via the Caspian Sea.
29 of the 67 people on board survived. Azerbaijan on Thursday held a national day of mourning for the victims of the crash.
“This is a great tragedy that has become a great suffering for the Azerbaijani people,” President Ilham Aliyev said on Thursday.
In Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “It would be wrong to put forward any hypotheses before the conclusions of the investigation. Of course we won’t do that, and no one should do that. We must wait until the investigation is completed.”
The Embraer 190 aircraft took off from the Azerbaijani capital Baku on Wednesday morning. The flight was scheduled to go to Grozny, Chechnya, but was diverted due to fog, the airline said.
A surviving passenger told Russian television he believed the pilot tried to land twice in thick fog over Grozny before “the third time something exploded… part of the plane’s skin had flown out.”
The plane was diverted to Aktau Airport, about 450 kilometers to the east. The footage shows the plane heading towards the ground at high speed 3km (1.9 miles) short of the runway before bursting into flames on landing.
Kazakh authorities have seized the flight data recorder and an investigation is underway. Shortly after the crash, Russian state television reports said the most likely cause was an attack by a flock of birds.
But such a collision usually causes the plane to glide toward the nearest airfield, aviation analyst Richard Aboulafia told Reuters. “You can lose control of the airplane, but it doesn’t take you completely off course,” he said.
Justin Crump of risk consulting firm Sibylline said the pattern of damage inside and outside the plane suggested Russian air defenses active in Grozny may have caused the crash.
“If you look at the shrapnel pattern we’re seeing, it looks very much like the detonation of an anti-aircraft missile in the tail and left of the aircraft,” he told BBC Radio 4.
According to the Reuters news agency, authorities in the nearby Russian regions of Ingushetia and North Ossetia reported drone attacks on Wednesday morning.
The chairman of the Kazakh Senate, Ashimbayev Maulen, emphasized that the cause of the crash was still unknown.
“None of these countries – Azerbaijan, Russia or Kazakhstan – are interested in hiding information. All information will be made available to the public,” he said.
There were mostly Azerbaijani nationals on board, but there were also some passengers from Russia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.
Video footage showed survivors crawling out of the rubble, some with visible injuries. The injured are being treated in hospital and eleven are in intensive care, the AFP news agency reported.
Embraer, a Brazilian manufacturer, is a smaller competitor to Boeing and Airbus and has a strong safety record.
