Azerbaijan Airlines jet crashes in Kazakhstan, with many people thought to be killed

According to Kazakh police, 32 people were recovered when an Embraer (EMBR3.SA) opened new tab passenger aircraft carrying 62 passengers and five crew members crashed near the Kazakh city of Aktau on Wednesday. The plane was traveling from Azerbaijan to Russia.

Following what Russia’s aviation authorities claimed was an incident that could have been brought on by a bird attack, Azerbaijan Airlines flight J2-8243 crashed on the other bank of the Caspian Sea, hundreds of kilometers off its planned course.

The accident occurred soon after drone attacks struck southern Russia, however officials could not immediately provide an explanation for why it had crossed the sea. Airports in the region had previously been blocked due to drone activity, and on Wednesday morning, the closest Russian airport on the plane’s flight route was shut down.

Video of the incident showed dense black smoke billowing and the jet plummeting quickly before exploding into flames as it struck the coastline. Passengers were observed staggering from a portion of the fuselage that had survived, bloodied and damaged.

Visible landmarks allowed Reuters to confirm that the footage was shot on the Caspian beach close to Aktau.

In a statement, Kazakhstan’s emergency ministry claimed that firefighters had extinguished the fire and that two children and other survivors were receiving medical attention at a nearby hospital. They were recovering the dead’s remains.

The Embraer 190 aircraft was in route from Baku to Grozny, the capital of the Chechnya region in southern Russia, according to Azerbaijan Airlines. However, the aircraft had to make an emergency landing just 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) from Aktau, Kazakhstan.

Russia’s aviation watchdog posted on Telegram, “Preliminary: after a collision with birds, due to an emergency situation on board, its commander decided to ‘go’ to an alternate airfield – Aktau was chosen.”

The flight path at the Russian airport was closed.

Russia and Azerbaijan are on the other side of the Caspian Sea from Aktau. Before its flight path was no longer recorded, commercial aviation tracking websites followed the northbound flight around the west coast on its planned course. On the east coast, it then made a second appearance, circling close to Aktau airport before colliding into the shore.

Drone strikes were reported Wednesday morning by authorities in Ingushetia and North Ossetia, two Russian districts that border Chechnya.
The airfield nearest to where the jet vanished from radar was Makhachkala in Russia on the east side of the Caspian, and an official told Reuters that it had been restricted to incoming traffic for many hours on Wednesday morning. Authorities at the Grozny airport were not immediately reachable by Reuters.

According to Kazakhstani authorities, a government committee has been established to look into what happened, and its members have been instructed to travel to the scene and make sure the relatives of the deceased and injured are receiving the assistance they require.

According to the authorities, Kazakhstan will assist Azerbaijan with the probe.

Both President Vladimir Putin and President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan sent condolence messages. According to his administration, Aliyev had made the decision to come home from Russia, where he was scheduled to attend a conference on Wednesday.

In a statement, Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin-backed leader of Chechnya, offered his sympathies and stated that he and others would pray for the quick recovery of those receiving hospital treatment, some of whom were in extremely bad condition.