Russian missiles may have been behind the air disaster in Kazakhstan

An Azerbaijan Airlines plane crashed this Wednesday morning in Kazakhstan, killing 38 of the 67 people on board. An incident with Russian air defense missiles may have caused the accident.

An Azerbaijan Airlines Embraer ERJ-190AR plane flying from Baku to Grozny crashed this Wednesday, about three kilometers from the city of Aktau.

“The situation is not good, 38 dead“, declared during a meeting with representatives of Azerbaijan the Deputy Prime Minister of Kazakhstan, Kanat Bozumbaev, quoted by the Russian agency Interfax. The same number of fatalities was reported by site pro-government Tengrinews.

The plane was flying between Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan and Grozny, the capital of the Russian republic of Chechnya and would take on board 67 peoplebut the circumstances of the accident have not yet been clarified.

The country’s Ministry of Emergency Situations indicated on the Telegram network that “29 people are hospitalized, including three children”.

The Azerbaijani Public Prosecutor’s Office had previously reported that 32 people survived, without indicating the death toll.

According to the airline, 62 passengers and five crew members were on board and the plane attempted to make a emergency landing about three kilometers from Aktau, a port on the Caspian Sea.

The device ended hit the ground and caught fire.

Kazakhstan airplane crash

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According to preliminary information provided by the airline, the accident was caused by a collision between the plane and a flock of birds.

However, according to , citing a report from the Azerbaijan-based international news channel AnewZ, which cites a Russian military blogger who claims that the damage to the plane suggests it may have been “accidentally hit by a Russian air defense missile system”.

This is because the plane would have passed through an area of ​​Russia (Chechnya) that was being defended from Ukrainian drone attacks.

Official sources linked to the accident investigation tell Euronews that the passengers survivors heard an explosion followed by what appeared to be shrapnel that hit the plane and damaged the fuselage.

For its part, FlightRadar24 said, cited by Euronewa, that the plane had faced “strong GPS interference”which “caused the plane to transmit poor ADS-B data,” referring to information that allows flight tracking websites to track planes in flight.

At a press conference, the President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, said that it was too early to speculate on the reasons for the accident, but stated that the weather conditions had forced the plane to change its planned route.