An Azerbaijan Airlines plane with 67 passengers and five crew on board, flying from the capital Baku to Grozny in Russia, has crashed in western Kazakhstan’s Aktau.
“A plane doing the Baku-Grozny route crashed near the city of Aktau. It belongs to Azerbaijan Airlines,” the Kazakh transport ministry said on social media platform, Telegram on Wednesday, 25 December 2024.
The Kazakhstan’s emergency ministry said 42 people are likely dead. It said 25 of them have survived the crash, according to preliminary assessment, and 22 survivors have been hospitalized.
Unverified video of the crash showed the Passenger Plane Carrying 67 People, which was operated by Azerbaijan Aeople Bursts Into Flames, bursting into flames as it hit the ground and thick black smoke then rising.
In a statement, the Central Asian country’s emergency ministry said that fire services had put out the blaze and that survivors were being treated at a nearby hospital.
Azerbaijan Airlines said the Embraer 190 aircraft, with flight number J2-8243, had been flying from Baku to Grozny, the capital of Russia’s Chechnya, but had been forced to make an emergency landing approximately 3 km (1.8 miles) from the Kazakh city of Aktau.
Russian news agencies said the plane had been rerouted due to fog in Grozny.
Russia’s Interfax news agency reported that authorities in Kazakhstan had begun investigating different possible versions of what had happened, including a technical problem.
Also, Russia’s aviation watchdog said in a statement that preliminary information suggested the pilot had decided to make an emergency landing after a bird strike.
Following the crash, Ilham Aliyev, the president of Azerbaijan, was returning home from Russia where he had been due to attend a summit on Wednesday, Russia’s RIA news agency reported.
Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin-backed leader of Chechnya, expressed his condolences in a statement and said those being treated in hospital were in an extremely serious condition and that he and others would pray for their rapid recovery.