An Azerbaijani airliner carrying 67 passengers crashed near the Kazakh city of Aktau on Wednesday, killing 38 people and leaving 29 alive, a Kazakh official said.
Russian news agency Interfax reported that Deputy Prime Minister Kanat Bozumbayev disclosed the figures during a meeting with Azerbaijani officials.
The Embraer 190 was en route from Azerbaijan’s capital Baku to the Russian city of Grozny in the North Caucasus when it attempted to make an emergency landing 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) from Aktau, Azerbaijan Airlines said.
Speaking at a press conference, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said it was too early to speculate on the cause of the crash, but said the weather had forced the plane to change its plans.
“The information provided to me is that the plane changed its route between Baku and Grozny due to bad weather and headed towards Aktau airport, where it crashed on landing,” he said.
Russia’s civil aviation authority, Rosaviatsia, said initial information indicated the pilots had diverted to Aktau after the bird struck the aircraft and triggered an emergency.
According to Kazakh officials, there were 42 Azerbaijani nationals, 16 Russian nationals, 6 Kazakh nationals and three Kyrgyz nationals on the plane. Azerbaijan’s Prosecutor General’s Office had previously said 32 of the 67 people on board had survived the crash, but told reporters the number was not final.
The Associated Press could not immediately reconcile the difference between the number of survivors given by Kazakh and Azerbaijani officials.
Mobile phone footage circulated online appeared to show the plane plummeting before crashing to the ground in a burst of flames. Other footage showed part of its fuselage torn from the wing and the rest of the plane overturned in the grass. The footage matches the aircraft’s color and registration number.
Some videos posted on social media showed survivors pulling fellow passengers out of the wreckage.
Flight-tracking data from FlightRadar24.com showed that the plane once appeared to be a figure eight near Octauco airport, moving its altitude up and down in the final minutes of the flight before impacting the ground.
FlightRadar24 said in a separate online post that the plane had encountered “strong GPS jamming,” which “caused the plane to transmit bad ADS-B data,” referring to information that allows flight tracking websites to follow planes in flight. Russia has been accused of jamming GPS transmissions over a wide area in the past.
Azerbaijan Airlines said it would keep members of the public updated and change its social media banners to solid black. It also said it would suspend flights between Baku and Grozny, as well as flights between Baku and the Russian city of Makhachkala in the North Caucasus, until its investigation into the crash is over.
Azerbaijan’s state news agency, Azertac, said an official delegation from Azerbaijan’s Minister of Emergency Situations, the Deputy General Prosecutor and the Vice President of Azerbaijan Airlines was sent to Aktau to “investigate on site”.
Aliyev, who was visiting Russia, returned to Azerbaijan after hearing the news of the plane crash, according to the press service of the president. He was in St Petersburg to attend an informal meeting of leaders of the Commonwealth of Independent States, a group of former Soviet states formed after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Aliyev expressed his condolences to the victim’s family in a statement released on social media. “It is with deep sorrow that I offer my condolences to the bereaved families and wish the injured a speedy recovery,” he wrote.
He also signed a decree declaring December 26 as a day of mourning in Azerbaijan.
Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke to Aliyev by phone and expressed his condolences, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
Speaking at the CIS meeting in St. Petersburg, Putin also said that Russia’s Emergencies Ministry had sent a plane with equipment and medical personnel to Kazakhstan for post-accident assistance.
Kazakh, Azerbaijani and Russian authorities said the crash was under investigation. Embraer said in a statement to The Associated Press that the company “stands ready to cooperate with all relevant authorities.”