Of the 67 people on board, including five crew, 38 were killed in the crash, while 29 were injured and required hospitalization, local authorities said.
According to Kazakhstan’s news website Orda, Azerbaijan Airlines flight J2-8243 was redirected due to fog over Grozny airport in the southern Russian autonomous republic of Chechnya.
An official at Makhachkala airport in Russia on the east coast of the Caspian, the airport closest to where the flight disappeared from tracking, told Reuters it had been closed to incoming traffic for several hours on Wednesday morning, as were several other nearby airports, due to drone strikes.
The pilots were forced to attempt and emergency landing at the Aktau airport, on the other side of the Caspian Sea, due to a serious malfunction that may have been caused by a bird strike, Orda reported, citing Kazakhstan’s Kazaeronavigatsia air navigation authority.
Video of the crash showed the plane descending rapidly before bursting into flames as it hit the seashore, and thick black smoke then rising. Bloodied and bruised passengers could be seen stumbling from a piece of the fuselage that had remained intact.
Bloodied and bruised passengers could be seen stumbling from a piece of the fuselage that had remained intact.
The Central Asian country’s emergencies ministry said in a statement that fire services had put out the blaze and that survivors were being treated at a nearby hospital. The bodies of the dead were being recovered.
Azerbaijan Airlines said the Embraer 190 aircraft, with flight number J2-8243, had been flying from Baku to Grozny, the capital of Russia's Chechnya, but had been forced to make an emergency landing approximately 3 km from the Kazakh city of Aktau.
Russian news agencies said the plane had been rerouted due to fog in Grozny.
Authorities in Kazakhstan said a government commission had been set up to investigate what had happened and its members ordered to fly to the site and ensure that the families of the dead and injured were getting the help they needed.
Kazakhstan would cooperate with Azerbaijan on the investigation, the government said.
Azerbaijan Airlines is suspending all its flights from Baku to Russia’s Chechnya region until an investigation into a fatal crash involving one of its planes is finished, Russia’s state TASS news agency cited the company saying on Wednesday.
Poland’s foreign ministry conveyed its condolences to those affected by the tragedy in a message published on X.
The passengers of the crashed airplane were citizens of Russia, Kazakhstan. Kirgizstan and Azerbaijan.
Following the crash, Ilham Aliyev, the president of Azerbaijan, was returning home from Russia where he had been due to attend a summit on Wednesday, Russia's RIA news agency reported.
He said that according to information he had received, the plane changed course due to poor weather, but he added the cause of the crash was unknown and must be fully investigated.
“This is a great tragedy that has become a tremendous sorrow for the Azerbaijani people,” Aliyev said.
A day of national mourning will be observed in Azerbaijan on December 26.
