An Azerbaijan Airlines passenger jet crashed in western Kazakhstan after travelling far off course, killing 38 of the 67 people on board, officials said.
The Embraer 190 aircraft was supposed to fly north-west from the Azerbaijani capital, Baku, to the city of Grozny in Chechnya in southern Russia, but instead flew across the Caspian Sea and went down near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan.
The plane’s course on the Flight Radar website showed it flying away from its normal route, crossing the Caspian Sea and then circling over the area where it eventually crashed near Aktau, which is an oil and gas hub on the eastern shore of the sea.
“The situation is not very good, 38 dead,” Russia’s Interfax news agency quoted Kazakh deputy prime minister Kanat Bozumbayev as saying.
The Kazakh emergency situations ministry reported, “29 survivors, including three children, have been hospitalised”.
The Azerbaijan Airlines Embraer ERJ-190AR passenger plane was flying from Baku to Grozny. Source: EPA / STR
Azerbaijan Airlines reported that 67 people were on board — 62 passengers and five crew members.
The Kazakh transport ministry said the plane was carrying 37 nationals from Azerbaijan, six from Kazakhstan, three from Kyrgyzstan and 16 from Russia.
“A plane doing the Baku-Grozny route crashed near the city of Aktau. It belongs to Azerbaijan Airlines,” the Kazakh transport ministry said on Telegram.
Azerbaijan Airlines, the country’s flag carrier, said the plane “made an emergency landing” around 3km from Aktau.
The Kazakh emergency situations ministry said its staff put out a fire which broke out when the plane crashed.
It said 150 emergency workers were at the scene.
Why did the Azerbaijan Airlines plane crash?
Kazakhstan said it had opened an investigation into the cause of the crash, which was not immediately clear.
Azerbaijan Airlines initially said the plane flew threw a flock of birds before withdrawing the statement.
“We cannot disclose any investigation results at this time,” the office of Azerbaijan’s prosecutor general said in a statement.
“All possible scenarios are being examined, and the necessary expert analyses are underway,” it added.
It said an investigative team led by the deputy prosecutor general of Azerbaijan has been dispatched to Kazakhstan and is working at the crash site.
Kazakhstan’s prosecutor in charge of transportation cases, Timur Suleymanov, said the plane’s flight data recorder had been found, Interfax news agency reported.
Sixty-two passengers and five crew were aboard the plane. Credit: AFP
Officials did not immediately explain why the plane had crossed the sea, but the crash came after Ukrainian drone strikes this month hit the Chechnya region of southern Russia. The nearest Russian airport on the plane’s flight path was closed on Wednesday morning.
Ukraine has not acknowledged strikes this month on the Chechen city of Grozny, where the flight was headed.
Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev said according to information he had received, the plane changed course due to poor weather, but he added the cause of the crash was unknown and must be fully investigated.
“This is a great tragedy that has become a tremendous sorrow for the Azerbaijani people,” he said.
A video of the crash showed the plane descending rapidly before bursting into flames upon hitting the seashore, with thick black smoke rising afterwards. Bloodied and bruised passengers could be seen stumbling from a piece of the fuselage that had remained intact.
Survivors ‘covered in blood’
A Kazakh woman told the local branch of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty said she was near where the plane crashed and rushed to the site to help survivors.
“They were covered in blood. They were crying. They were calling for help,” said the woman, who gave her name as Elmira.
She said they saved some teenagers.
“I’ll never forget their look, full of pain and despair,” she said. “A girl pleaded: ‘Save my mother, my mother is back there’.”
The health ministry said a special flight was being sent from the Kazakh capital Astana with specialist doctors to treat the injured.
The plane crashed some 3km away from the city of Aktau. Source: EPA / Azamat Sarsenbayev
Aliyev declared Thursday a day of national mourning and cancelled a planned visit to Russia for an informal summit of leaders of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a grouping of former Soviet nations.
Aliyev’s office said the president “ordered the prompt initiation of urgent measures to investigate the causes of the disaster”.
“I extend my condolences to the families of those who lost their lives in the crash … and wish a speedy recovery to the injured,” Aliyev said in a social media post.
Russian President Vladimir Putin held a phone conversation with Aliyev and also “expressed his condolences in connection with the crash”, his spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a news conference.
A Russian emergency situations ministry plane had been sent to Aktau with medical personnel and other equipment, Putin said later as he opened the CIS leaders’ meeting in Saint Petersburg.
Azerbaijan’s first lady Mehriban Aliyeva, who is also the country’s first vice president, said she was “deeply saddened by the news of the tragic loss of lives in the plane crash near Aktau”.
“I extend my heartfelt condolences to the families and loved ones of the victims. Wishing them strength and patience! I also wish a speedy recovery to the injured.”
Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said on Telegram: “I express my condolences to the relatives of the passengers of the Azerbaijan Airlines jet who died.”
