Azerbaijani airliner with 67 on board crashes in Kazakhstan, leaving 32 survivors

An Azerbaijani airliner with 67 people on board crashed in the Kazakh city of Aktau on Wednesday, leaving at least 32 survivors, according to officials. More than 30 people are probably dead.

Kazakhstan’s Emergencies Ministry said in a Telegram statement that those on board included five crew members. At least 29 have been hospitalized, the ministry told Russia’s state news agency RIA Novosti.

Russian news agency Interfax quoted doctors as saying that four bodies had been recovered, and emergency workers at the scene said that both pilots died in the crash, according to a preliminary assessment.

The Embraer 190 plane made an emergency landing 3 km from the city, Azerbaijan Airlines said earlier.

Kazakhstan’s Emergencies Ministry initially said 25 people survived the crash, later revising the number to 27, 28 and then 29 as search and rescue operations continued at the crash site, bringing down the presumed death toll.

The Prosecutor’s Office of Azerbaijan later reported that at least 32 people survived the crash, adding that the number was not final.

The number of survivors could mean that over 30 people could be dead.

The plane was originally scheduled to travel from the Azerbaijani capital Baku to the Russian city of Grozny in the North Caucasus. According to Azerbaijan Airlines, 37 passengers were Azerbaijani citizens. There were also 16 Russian nationals, six Kazakh and three Kyrgyz nationals, it said.

RIA Novosti quoted Russia’s civil aviation authority, Rosaviatsia, as saying that preliminary information showed that the pilot had chosen to divert to Aktau after a bird strike on the plane led to “an emergency on board”.

Cell phone footage circulating online appeared to show the plane making a steep descent before smashing into the ground in a fireball. Other footage showed part of its fuselage torn away from the wings and the rest of the plane, lying upside down in the grass. The footage matched the aircraft’s colors and registration number.

Some of the videos posted on social media showed survivors dragging fellow passengers away from the plane’s wreckage.

Flight tracking data from FlightRadar24.com showed the plane making what appeared to be a straight figure as it approached Aktau airport, its altitude moving up and down significantly during the final minutes of the flight before hitting the ground.

Separately, FlightRadar24 said in an online post that the plane had suffered “strong GPS jamming” which “caused the plane to transmit poor ADS-B data”, referring to the information that allows aircraft tracking websites to follow aircraft in flight. Russia has previously been blamed for jamming GPS transmissions in the wider region.

Embraer did not immediately respond to a request for comment early Wednesday morning. In a statement, Azerbaijan Airlines said it would keep members of the public updated and changed its social media banners to solid black.

Azerbaijan’s state news agency, Azertac, said an official delegation comprising Azerbaijan’s minister of emergency situations, the country’s deputy prosecutor and the vice president of Azerbaijan Airlines had been sent to Aktau to conduct an “on-the-spot investigation”.

Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev, who had been on a trip to St. Petersburg, returned to Azerbaijan after hearing the news of the crash, the presidential press service said. Aliyev was due to attend an informal meeting of leaders of the Commonwealth of Independent States, a bloc of former Soviet countries founded after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Aliyev expressed his condolences to the victims’ families in a statement on social media. “It is with deep sadness that I express my condolences to the families of the victims and wish a speedy recovery to the injured,” he wrote.

Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke to Aliyev on the phone and expressed his condolences, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

Both Kazakh and Azerbaijani authorities investigated the accident. Embraer told The Associated Press in a statement that the company is “ready to assist all relevant authorities.”