An Embraer EMBR3.SA passenger jet crashed near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan, killing 38 of the 67 people on board, including five crew members, after diverting from a region of Russia where Moscow has recently used air defense systems to counter Ukrainian drone strikes.

Azerbaijan Airlines flight J2-8243 had strayed hundreds of miles off its scheduled route from Baku, Azerbaijan, to Grozny, the capital of Russia’s Chechnya, before crashing on the opposite shore of the Caspian Sea, after what Russia’s aviation watchdog said was an emergency that may have been caused by a bird strike.

Officials did not immediately explain why it had crossed the sea, but the crash came after Ukrainian drone strikes this month hit the Chechnya region of southern Russia.

The nearest Russian airport on the plane’s flight path was closed on Wednesday morning.

Initial probe points to Russia

On Thursday, Azerbaijani government sources told Euronews that their initial investigation indicates that a Russian surface-to-air missile was responsible for the crash.

The sources claimed that the missile was launched at Flight J2-8243 amid drone activity over Grozny, with the shrapnel striking passengers and crew after it detonated near the aircraft mid-flight.

They also claimed that, despite the pilots’ request for an emergency landing, the damaged plane was denied access to any Russian airports and was instructed to continue across the Caspian Sea toward Aktau.

The missile was allegedly fired from a Pantsir-S air defence system, Azerbaijani news outlet AnewZ reported, citing government sources.

Earlier, Russian sources said that at the time Flight J2-8243 was flying over Grozny, Russian air defense forces had been attempting to intercept Ukrainian UAVs.

Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin-backed leader of Chechnya, also confirmed that a drone attack on Grozny took place on Wednesday morning, saying that there were no casualties or damage.

Flight data shows that the aircraft’s GPS navigation system was jammed throughout its flight across the Caspian Sea.

If the preliminary findings are correct, this would mark the second time in a decade that Russian forces have downed a commercial aircraft.

A decade earlier, on July 17, 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, traveling from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, was shot down over eastern Ukraine by Russian-backed separatists, killing all 298 people on board.