December 26, 2024, 3:10 PM
December 26, 2024, 3:10 PM
The Russian government spoke out against some “hypotheses” about the cause of the crash of a passenger plane bound for Russia in which 38 people died this Wednesday in Kazakhstan.
Some aviation experts have suggested that the Azerbaijan Airlines plane was hit by Russian air defense systems while flying over the Chechen Republic (Russia). In statements to media outlets supporting the Azerbaijani government, officials from that country stated that a Russian missile was responsible for the accident.
Before crashing near the Kazakh city of Aktau, the plane was diverted across the Caspian Sea, from Chechnya to western Kazakhstan.
29 of the 67 people on board survived. Azerbaijan declared this Thursday a day of national mourning for the victims of the accident.
“This is a great tragedy that has become a tremendous pain for the Azerbaijani people,” President Ilham Aliyev said Thursday.
In Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “It would be a mistake to raise any hypothesis before knowing the conclusions of the research. We, of course, won’t, and no one should. “We must wait for the investigation to conclude.”
The Embraer 190 plane took off from the Azerbaijani capital, Baku, on Wednesday morning. It was supposed to arrive in Grozny, in Chechnya (Russia), but was diverted, according to the airline, due to fog.
One survivor told Russian television that he believed the pilot had tried to land twice in dense fog over Grozny, and that “the third time, something exploded… part of the fuselage of the plane flew into the air.”
The plane was diverted to Aktau airport (Kazakhstan), about 450 km to the east. The images that have become known show how the plane heads towards the ground at high speed before bursting into flames upon landing 3 kilometers from the runway.
Kazakh authorities have recovered the flight data recorder and an investigation is underway. Shortly after the crash, Russian television reported that the most likely cause was that the plane had collided with a flock of birds.
But that type of collision usually causes the plane to slide towards the nearest airport, aviation analyst Richard Aboulafia told the Reuters news agency. “You can lose control of the plane, but you don’t fly wildly off course because of some birds,” he said.
Justin Crump of risk consultancy Sibylline said the pattern of damage inside and outside the plane indicates that active Russian air defense in Grozny could have caused the accident.
“It looks very similar to the detonation of an air defense missile to the rear and to the left of the plane, if you look at the shrapnel pattern we see,” he told BBC Radio 4.
Late Thursday, Azerbaijani pro-government channel AnewZ said a preliminary investigation had concluded that the plane had been hit by shrapnel from a surface-to-air missile from the Russian Pantsir-S defense system.
The country’s attorney general’s office told the BBC that all versions were being investigated.
Chechnya has been the target of Ukrainian drone attacks this month, and authorities in the neighboring republic of Ingushetia recently claimed to have been targeted for the first time since the war in Ukraine began.
In North Ossetia, another nearby Russian republic, a drone crashed into a shopping mall, reportedly killing a woman.
Most of the passengers on the crashed plane were citizens of Azerbaijan, but there were also Russians, Kazakhs and Kyrgyz.
Videos show survivors crawling out of the wreckage of the plane, some with visible injuries.
The injured were taken to the hospital. On Thursday, the Azerbaijani news agency Azertac reported that seven of them were fit to fly back to Baku.
Azerbaijan Airlines stated before the press that The plane had undergone a complete inspection in October and did not present any technical failure.
Embraer, a Brazilian manufacturer and rival to Boeing and Airbus, has a strong safety record.
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