Azerbaijan Airlines crash in Kazakhstan killed 38, officials say

An Azerbaijan Airlines passenger jet crashed on Wednesday in western Kazakhstan, killing 38 of the 67 people on board, officials said.

The Embraer 190 aircraft that was supposed to fly northwest from the Azerbaijani capital Baku to the city of Grozny in Chechnya in southern Russia instead flew across the Caspian Sea and went down near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan.

The plane’s course on Flight Radar showed it flying away from its normal route and then circling over the area where it eventually crashed near Aktau, which is an oil and gas hub on the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea.

“The situation is not very good, 38 dead,” Russia’s Interfax news agency quoted Kazakh Deputy Prime Minister Kanat Bozumbayev as saying.

Azerbaijan Airlines reported that 67 people were on board — 62 passengers and five crew members.

The Kazakh emergency situations ministry reported earlier in the day that “28 survivors including two children have been hospitalised.”

The Kazakh transport ministry said the plane was carrying 37 nationals from Azerbaijan, six from Kazakhstan, three from Kyrgyzstan and 16 from Russia.

“A plane doing the Baku-Grozny route crashed near the city of Aktau. It belongs to Azerbaijan Airlines,” the Kazakh transport ministry said on Telegram.

Azerbaijan Airlines, the country’s flag carrier, said the plane “made an emergency landing” around three kilometres (1.9 miles) from Aktau.

Kazakhstan said it had opened an investigation.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev declared Thursday a day of national mourning and cancelled a planned visit to Russia for an informal summit of leaders of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a grouping of former Soviet nations.