Azerbaijan yesterday began a national day of mourning after a passenger jet from the flag carrier crashed in western Kazakhstan on Christmas Day, killing 38 of the 67 people on board.
The Embraer 190 aircraft was supposed to fly northwest from the Azerbaijani capital, Baku, to the city of Grozny in Chechnya in southern Russia, but instead diverted far off course across the Caspian Sea.
It crashed on Wednesday near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan.
Photo: AFP
Azerbaijan Airlines reported that 67 people were on board the jet — 62 passengers and five crew members.
Kazakh Deputy Prime Minister Kanat Bozumbayev told Russia’s Interfax news agency that 38 people had been killed, while the Kazakh Ministry of Emergencies reported that “29 survivors, including three children, have been hospitalized.”
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev declared yesterday a day of mourning and canceled a planned visit to Russia for an informal summit of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a grouping of former Soviet nations.
Aliyev’s office said that 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 on social media.
The Flight Radar Web site showed the plane deviating from its normal route, crossing the Caspian Sea and then circling over the area where it eventually crashed near Aktau, an oil and gas hub on the eastern shore of the sea.
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 Web sites to follow planes in flight.
Russia has been blamed in the past for jamming GPS transmissions in the wider region.
Azerbaijan state news agency AZERTAC reported that the aircraft’s black box, which records the flight data, has been recovered.
The Kazakh Ministry of Transport said that the plane was carrying 37 nationals from Azerbaijan, six from Kazakhstan, three from Kyrgyzstan and 16 from Russia.
Azerbaijan Airlines, the country’s flag carrier, said the plane “made an emergency landing” about 3km from Aktau.
The emergencies ministry said that its staff put out a fire that broke out when the plane crashed.
It said that 150 emergency workers were at the scene.
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 through 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 under way,” it added.
An investigative team led by the deputy prosecutor general of Azerbaijan had been dispatched to Kazakhstan and was working at the crash site, it said.
A Kazakh woman told the local branch of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that 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,” Elmira said. “A girl pleaded: ‘Save my mother, my mother is back there.’”
The health ministry said that a special flight was being sent from the Kazakh capital, Astana, with specialist doctors to treat the injured people.
Russian President Vladimir Putin held a telephone conversation with Aliyev and “expressed his condolences in connection with the crash,” Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a news conference.
A Russian response team had been sent to Aktau with medical personnel and other equipment, Putin said later as he opened the CIS leaders’ meeting in Saint Petersburg.
Azerbaijani Vice President Mehriban Aliyeva said that 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,” she wrote on Instagram.
Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov wrote on Telegram: “I express my condolences to the relatives of the passengers of the Azerbaijan Airlines jet who died.”
Additional reporting by AP
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