Thirty-eight people were killed when an Azerbaijan Airlines plane with 67 on board crashed in Kazakhstan on Wednesday, a senior Kazakh official said.
“The situation is not very good, 38 dead,” Russia’s Interfax news agency quoted Deputy Prime Minister Kanat Bozumbayev as saying.
Azerbaijani authorities said 32 people had survived the Embraer 190 crash near the city of Aktau, an oil and gas hub on the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea.
The plane was flying from the Azerbaijani capital Baku on the western shore of the Caspian to the city of Grozny in Chechnya in southern Russia.
- Relegation-threatened Plateau United host Enyimba in rescheduled fixture
- Confident Djokovic eyes more Slam glory
“A plane doing the Baku-Grozny route crashed near the city of Aktau. It belongs to Azerbaijan Airlines,” the Kazakh transport ministry said on Telegram.
Azerbaijan Airlines, the country’s flag carrier, said the plane “made an emergency landing” around three kilometres (1.9 miles) from Aktau.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev declared Thursday a day of national mourning and cancelled a planned visit to Russia for an informal summit of leaders of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a grouping of former Soviet nations.
The Kazakh transport ministry said the plane was carrying 37 nationals from Azerbaijan, six from Kazakhstan, three from Kyrgyzstan and 16 from Russia.
The office of Azerbaijan’s prosecutor general said: “According to available data, 32 people survived the crash.”
“We cannot disclose any investigation results at this time. All possible scenarios are being examined, and the necessary expert analyses are underway,” it said in a statement.
“An investigative team, led by the deputy prosecutor general of Azerbaijan, has been dispatched to Kazakhstan and is working at the crash site.”
Join Daily Trust WhatsApp Community For Quick Access To News and Happenings Around You.
