MOSCOW: An Azerbaijani airliner with 67 persons on board crashed on Wednesday near the Kazakhstani city of Aktau. According to Kazakhstan officials, 38 people have died in the crash.
Deputy Prime Minister Kanat Bozumbaev disclosed the death toll while meeting with Azerbaijani officials. Azerbaijan’s prosecutor general’s office had previously said that 32 of the 67 people on board the plane had survived.
The Embraer 190 was en route from the Azerbaijani capital of Baku to the Russian city of Grozny in the North Caucasus. Preliminary information showed that the pilots diverted to Aktau after a bird strike led to an emergency on board, Russia’s civil aviation authority, Rosaviatsia said.
Kazakhstan’s Emergency Ministry said in a Telegram statement that those onboard included five crew. A total of 29 survivors, including two children, have been hospitalized. Another Russian news agency, Interfax, reported that four bodies had been recovered, while both pilots had died in the mishap.
The plane crashed while attempting an emergency landing 3 km from Aktau, Azerbaijan Airlines said.
According to Kazakh officials, those aboard the plane included 42 Azerbaijani citizens, 16 Russian nationals, six Kazakhs and three Kyrgyzstan nationals.
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 colours and its registration number. Some of the videos posted on social media showed survivors dragging fellow passengers away from the wreckage.
It is being said that the aircraft faced “strong GPS jamming” which made the aircraft transmit bad ADS-B data, which allows flight-tracking websites to follow planes in flight. Russia has been blamed in the past for jamming GPS transmissions in the wider region.
Speaking at a news conference, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said that it was too soon to speculate on the reasons behind the crash, but said that the weather had forced the plane to change from its planned course.