Astana (TDI): An Azerbaijan Airlines passenger jet crashed on Wednesday in western Kazakhstan, perishing 38 of the 67 people on board, officials said.
The Embraer 190 aircraft that was supposed to fly northwest from the Baku, Azerbaijan, to the city of Grozny in Chechnya in southern Russia instead flew across the Caspian Sea and went down near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan.
Flight Radar revealed the aircraft deviating from its usual route before circling over the crash site near Aktau, an oil and gas hub on the eastern Caspian Sea shore.
“The situation is not very good, thirty-eight dead,” Russian media reported quoting Kazakh Deputy Prime Minister Kanat Bozumbayev.
Also Read: Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, China Establish Cargo Terminal
Azerbaijan Airlines reported that sixty-seven people were on board — 62 passengers and 5 crew members.
The Kazakh emergency situations ministry said earlier that “twenty-eight people including two minors have been hospitalised.”
Also Read: Pakistan Invites Azerbaijan to Invest in PIA, State-Owned Enterprises
The Kazakh transport ministry said the aircraft was carrying 37 nationals from Azerbaijan, 6 from Kazakhstan, 3 from Kyrgyzstan and sixteen from Russia.
“An aircraft doing the Baku-Grozny route crashed near the city of Aktau. The plane belongs to Azerbaijan Airlines,” Kazakhstan Ministry of Transport said in a post on Telegram.
Azerbaijan Airlines, the country’s flag carrier, said the aircraft “made an emergency landing” around 3 kilometres (1.9 miles) from Aktau.
Investigation Opened
Kazakhstan said it had opened a probe into the accident.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev declared Thursday a day of national mourning and cancelled a planned trip to Russia for an informal summit of leaders of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a bloc of former Soviet nations.
“We cannot disclose any results of the probe now, Azerbaijan’s prosecutor general office said in a statement.
“All possible scenarios are being examined, and the required expert analyses are underway,” it added.
It said an investigative team headed by the deputy prosecutor general of Azerbaijan has been sent to Kazakhstan and is working at the crash site.
