KAZAKHSTAN EMERGENCIES MINISTRY / EPA
The Azerbaijan Airlines Embraer ERJ-190AR passenger plane flying from Baku to Grozny crashed about three kilometers from the city of Aktau
The Grozny airport where the Azerbaijan Airlines plane that crashed this Wednesday was flying had implemented a plan against Ukrainian drone attacks in the Russian region of Chechnya. Memories of MH17 came back.
The Russian aviation agency Rosaviatsia acknowledged, on Friday, that the crash of an Embraer in Kazakhstan, which killed 38 people, happened at a time when a military operation was underway in the region in the context of the war in Ukraine. However, the agency did not hold Russia directly responsible.
Initially, the suggested causes for the accident were the collision with a group of birds or the explosion of an oxygen tank.
However, a few hours later, videos showing marks similar to the impact of shrapnel from an anti-aircraft missile on the fuselage of the plane.
“The situation in the Grozny airport area was extremely complex. At that time, the Ukrainian drones carried out terrorist attacks against the cities of Grozny and Vladikavkaz”, admitted the head of Rosaviatsia, Dmitri Yadrovcited by the Russian news agency TASS.
Therefore, he noted, Grozny airport ordered “the immediate departure of all aircraft from that area”.
According to Yadrov, “the aircraft commander unsuccessfully tried to land twice in Grozny”, but air traffic controllers “proposed other airports”. “He made the decision to continue to Aktau airport”; and the plane ended up crashing near Kazakhstan’s Aktau airport, killing 38 people.
The Kazakh authorities have so far avoided pronouncing on a definitive version and have only confirmed the explosion of the oxygen cylinder while investigations continue.
Azerbaijani government sources argued, anonymously, that the plane crash was caused shrapnel from a Russian surface-to-air missile that hit the planewhen it was in the airspace of the Russian city of Grozny, its destination.
Survivors report explosion
According to Reuters, one of the 29 passengers who survived the crash reported hearing at least one large explosion as the plane approached Grozny airport.
“I thought the plane was going to disintegrate,” said Subhonkul Rakhimov, who is in hospital. “It was like [o avião] was drunkit was no longer the same”, he added, quoted by .
Another survivor told the Russian state channel RT that the plane made three attempts to land in Grozny and that on the third approach “something exploded, I wouldn’t say it was inside the plane”. Furthermore, it says that a piece of Shrapnel flew between his legs and pierced a life jacket.
The Brazilian-made Embraer 190 made the connection between Baku and Grozny, in the Russian region of Chechnya, and would carry 67 people on board.
A few hours after the start of the flight, the Azerbaijan Airlines plane requested an emergency landing.
Due to heavy fog in Grozny, the plane was diverted first to Makhachkala, in Russian Dagestan, and then to Aktau, where it ended up crashing about three kilometers from the Caspian city’s airport.
The device ended up hitting the ground and caught fire.
A Ukraine accused Russia of shooting down the plane with a missile of air defense. North American television channels ABC News and CNN reported that the US believes there is evidence that the plane may have been hit by a Russian anti-aircraft system.
FlightRadar24 (a platform that tracks air traffic) said that the GPS of the plane was exposed to interference and falsification near Groznywhich caused the plane to transmit poor ADS-B data.
The accusations surrounding the plane crash brought back memories of the Malaysia Airlines flight, which was shot down over eastern Ukraine in 2014 and killed 298 people.
