Azerbaijan Airline plane crashes in Kazakhstan, at least 30 killed

An Azer­bai­jani air­lin­er with 67 peo­ple on­board crashed Wednes­day near the Kaza­khstani city of Ak­tau, leav­ing at least 32 sur­vivors, ac­cord­ing to of­fi­cials. More than 30 peo­ple may be dead.

The plane was en route from the Azer­bai­jani cap­i­tal of Baku to the Russ­ian city of Grozny in the North Cau­ca­sus.

Kaza­khstan’s Emer­gency Min­istry said in a Telegram state­ment that those on board in­clud­ed five crew. A to­tal of 29 sur­vivors, in­clud­ing two chil­dren, have been hos­pi­tal­ized, the min­istry told Rus­sia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti.

An­oth­er Russ­ian news agency, In­ter­fax quot­ed med­ical work­ers as say­ing that four bod­ies have been re­cov­ered and emer­gency work­ers at the scene as say­ing that both pi­lots, ac­cord­ing to a pre­lim­i­nary as­sess­ment, died in the crash.

The Em­braer 190 air­craft made an emer­gency land­ing 3 km from the city, Azer­bai­jan Air­lines said ear­li­er.

Kaza­khstan’s Emer­gency Min­istry ini­tial­ly said 25 peo­ple sur­vived the crash, lat­er re­vis­ing that num­ber to 27, 28, and then 29 as the search and res­cue op­er­a­tion con­tin­ued at the site of the crash, bring­ing the sup­posed death toll down.

The Pros­e­cu­tor Gen­er­al’s Of­fice in Azer­bai­jan lat­er re­port­ed that at least 32 peo­ple sur­vived the crash, adding that the num­ber wasn’t fi­nal. Azer­bai­jan’s For­eign Min­istry said in a state­ment that some of them were in crit­i­cal con­di­tion.

The num­ber of sur­vivors could mean that over 30 peo­ple may be dead.

Ac­cord­ing to Kaza­khstani of­fi­cials, those aboard the plane in­clud­ed 42 Azer­bai­jani cit­i­zens, 16 Russ­ian na­tion­als, six Kaza­khstani and three Kyr­gyzs­tani cit­i­zens, it said.

RIA Novosti quot­ed Rus­sia’s civ­il avi­a­tion au­thor­i­ty, Rosavi­at­sia, as say­ing that pre­lim­i­nary in­for­ma­tion showed that the pi­lot had cho­sen to di­vert to Kaza­khstan’s Ak­tau af­ter a bird strike on the air­craft led to “an emer­gency sit­u­a­tion on board”.

Mo­bile phone footage cir­cu­lat­ing on­line ap­peared to show the air­craft mak­ing a steep de­scent be­fore smash­ing in­to the ground in a fire­ball. Oth­er footage showed part of its fuse­lage ripped away from the wings and the rest of the air­craft, ly­ing up­side in the grass. The footage cor­re­spond­ed to the plane’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 the air­craft mak­ing what ap­peared to be a fig­ure-right once near­ing the air­port in Ak­tau, its al­ti­tude mov­ing up and down sub­stan­tial­ly over the last min­utes of the flight be­fore im­pact­ing the ground.

Fligh­tRadar24 sep­a­rate­ly said in an on­line post that the air­craft had faced “strong GPS jam­ming” which “ made the air­craft trans­mit bad ADS-B da­ta”, re­fer­ring to the in­for­ma­tion that al­lows flight-track­ing web­sites to fol­low planes in flight. Rus­sia has been blamed in the past for jam­ming GPS trans­mis­sions in the wider re­gion.

In a state­ment, Azer­bai­jan Air­lines said it would keep mem­bers of the pub­lic up­dat­ed and changed its so­cial me­dia ban­ners to sol­id black.

Azer­bai­jan’s state news agency, Az­er­tac, said that an of­fi­cial del­e­ga­tion con­sist­ing of Azer­bai­jan’s emer­gency sit­u­a­tions min­is­ter, the coun­try’s deputy gen­er­al pros­e­cu­tor, and the vice pres­i­dent of Azer­bai­jan Air­lines had been dis­patched to Ak­tau to con­duct an “on-site in­ves­ti­ga­tion”.

Azer­bai­jani Pres­i­dent Il­ham Aliyev, who had been trav­el­ling to Rus­sia, re­turned to Azer­bai­jan on hear­ing news of the crash, the pres­i­dent’s press ser­vice said. Aliyev was due to at­tend an in­for­mal meet­ing of lead­ers of the Com­mon­wealth of In­de­pen­dent States, a bloc of for­mer So­vi­et coun­tries found­ed af­ter the col­lapse of the So­vi­et Union, in St. Pe­ters­burg.

Aliyev ex­pressed his con­do­lences to the fam­i­lies of the vic­tims in a state­ment on so­cial me­dia. “It is with deep sad­ness that I ex­press my con­do­lences to the fam­i­lies of the vic­tims and wish a speedy re­cov­ery to those in­jured,” he wrote.

Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin spoke to Aliyev on the phone and ex­pressed his con­do­lences, Krem­lin spokesman Dmit­ry Peskov told re­porters.

Speak­ing at the CIS meet­ing in St. Pe­ters­burg, Putin al­so said that Rus­sia’s Emer­gency Min­istry sent a plane with equip­ment and med­ical work­ers to Kaza­khstan to as­sist with the af­ter­math of the crash.

Kaza­khstani, Azer­bai­jani and Russ­ian au­thor­i­ties said they were in­ves­ti­gat­ing the crash. Em­braer told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press in a state­ment that the com­pa­ny is “ready to as­sist all rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties.”

Ar­ti­cle by AP.