Dozens of individuals had been feared useless after a jet carrying 62 passengers and 5 crew members crashed close to town of Aktau in Kazakhstan on Wednesday, the nation’s authorities stated.
Kazakhstan’s Emergency Situations Ministry stated that not less than 29 individuals had survived, together with two youngsters, and that they’d been hospitalized with varied accidents. An unverified video from the scene, printed by RIA Novosti, a Russian state information company, confirmed injured individuals being pulled from the wreckage.
The Azerbaijan Airlines airplane had been attempting to make an emergency touchdown in Aktau after hitting a flock of birds, Russia’s state aviation authority stated in a press release cited by RIA Novosti. The airline stated in a press release that its airplane had come down about 1.8 miles away from Aktau.
The Embraer-190 airplane was touring to Grozny, in Russia’s Chechnya republic within the North Caucasus, from Baku, the Azerbaijani capital on the Caspian Sea. RIA Novosti reported that the airplane had been rerouted to Kazakhstan due to fog in Grozny.
Flightradar24, a flight monitoring service, stated in a put up on the social media platform X that the airplane had been “uncovered to GPS jamming and spoofing close to Grozny.” Radar jamming is commonly used to defend an space in opposition to drones. It was not instantly clear whether or not this had performed any position within the crash.
On Wednesday, native information retailers in Chechnya reported drone strikes in opposition to the republic. Grozny Inform, a state-run information web site in Chechnya, cited Khamzat Kadyrov, an area safety official, as stating that all the drones had been shot down. The studies couldn’t be independently verified. Ukrainian drones have hit varied targets in Chechnya in latest weeks, together with a web site belonging to a riot police battalion.
Kazakhstan’s transportation ministry stated that the flight’s passengers included 37 Azerbaijani nationals, 16 Russians, six Kazakh residents and three Kyrgyz nationals.
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia known as Ilham Aliyev, his Azerbaijani counterpart, to specific condolences for the crash victims, based on Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman. Mr. Aliyev had been in St. Petersburg, Russia, on Wednesday for a gathering of leaders of some former Soviet states, however returned to Azerbaijan due to the crash, the Kremlin stated.
Kazakhstan’s Emergency Situations Ministry initially stated 25 individuals had survived the crash, however later revised that quantity to 29 as emergency staff continued their search and rescue efforts. The ministry stated it had opened an investigation.
This is a growing story. Check again for updates.
Milana Mazaeva contributed reporting.
